Last week we bought tickets to the 2025 Cruel World Festival. I had said that I was not going to go to another festival after the one in 2024, but the lineup for 2025 is too good and includes Madness, which I've never seen in concert and have always wanted to. I've seen OMD in San Francisco, but I would not mind seeing them again, as well as the Buzzcocks (when Pete Shelley was alive, 1982) and the Go-Go's.

T*cke*ma*ter was not involved in this purchase, as the tickets were sold by Jampack and are not transferable. Kevin told me that the tickets can be used on the purchasers phone only, and the codes for authorization change constantly, in order to prevent reselling of tickets.

We bought a package that included a two-night stay in a hotel, but the closest hotel was in Glendale (not that far) although we would have preferred to stay in Pasadena. I guess this will be our first trip back to L.A. after selling our house there, and we plan to add a couple of nights at another hotel while we are there, probably in West L.A., which is where I like to shop.

Personally, I would want to avoid anything that involved TM.

For a variety of reasons, in-demand events often sell out when tickets first go on sale. Thereafter, all that remains is the resale market. If you know of an upcoming event you want to go to and you want to limit the cost to the face price, you need to join the mob of people scrambling online who all hope to hit the Refresh button at the right time that gets one to the front of the queue when the "ticket window" opens for business.

I think you're missing the point....which is -- when did T**ke*ma*ter become a re-seller of its own tickets and how is this even allowed?

What point am I missing? The company you mention doesn't have "its own tickets". It's an agency. At first issuance, it sells tickets on behalf of customers who hire it to do so (whoever or whatever is putting on the event) and charges a fee for the service.

Why shouldn't it be allowed to operate in the resale market too? Would you be happier if Stub H were the only one in that business? (Don't know why I didn't spell it out)

T**k**m**t*r here in Australia are the only permitted resellers of tickets they originally issued. This is to prevent scalping. If for some reason you decide not to use tickets you have bought, you need to get T**k**m**t*r to resell them for you. If you resell them privately, the person who bought them will be refused entry.

Same here in the USA colleen. TM is the reseller if I have a ticket that I won’t use. They started doing it when fake tickets were being sold.

From a quick search…

It still doesn't sit right with me. Facilitating re-sale of tickets that persons can "no longer use".....pffft....the likely scenario is that the "persons" are agencies/bots/whatever scooping up loads of tickets for the sole purpose of turning a profit. T**k**m**t*r is complicit in the scalping, as I see it.

I really don't care about the concert, it's DH who wanted to go, it's no skin off my back if I don't get any tickets. I'm just rather surprised (and dismayed) that they are now allowed to do this.

I get what you're saying. It seems it would be more fair to prevent scalping/speculating, if tickets couldn't be sold for more than face value. Can't use them? Great, get your money back by reselling them for what you paid and let someone else have a chance. Let T**k**m**t*r charge a small fee for their resale services.

I wasn't aware of the useful background maddielee provided. That makes a lot of sense, to protect the market from counterfeit and stolen tickets.

I can't imagine why anyone would find that offensive. Two problems that used to be rampant are eliminated. When you buy a used car, are you concerned with why someone wants to sell it? If they're really the prior owner or just pretending to be? No, of course not. The circumstances why something is on the market for resale doesn't matter.

I had tickets to a show a couple of years ago and due to a family emergency, I wasn't able to go. I sold them back to T**k**m**t*r and someone else was able to go. I got all my money refunded. It made it simple for me to not have to sell them on my own.

Not sure what the issue is?

I think the issue is the large number of tickets that appear for resale at hugely inflated prices, not for the price someone paid for the tickets. It looks as if T**k**m**t*r is buying up large blocks of tickets at the original price, then re-selling them for huge profits. Or if not T**k**m**t*r, then other groups/agencies/business or organizations, who do it simply to make obscene profits. Issue would be easy to fix by preventing speculating and re-selling for more than the original price.

^^ Yes, what Olychick said is the problem I have with this.

I'm pretty sure that here the ticket price is close to the original price- the seller doesn't set the price.

Makes me miss the days when we would get in line 2 days before to buy the tickets in person.

...........well.... sort of........

Actually colleen, when I sold mine about a year ago, I set the price. I didn’t add on to what I had paid. It was a pain for me to do, as I am Canadian, and there was an across border issue. worked out in the end, but I wouldnt do it again.

" Makes me miss the days when we would get in line 2 days before "

This was common at my college for things like athletic tickets or popular concerts but doing so was done in groups to cover the place in line in shifts and as a pretense for a long party. Making the party almost as much of a draw as the event tickets. Personally, I never did it again after graduating into adulthood. And I don't miss it.

I hate that most of tickets now have to be bought on that website.

"I hate that most of tickets now have to be bought on that website."

There was another concert I wanted to go to, tickets recently went on sale. Got to that website and decided it wasn't worth the grief -- I had to sign in to even be allowed in the que, couldn't view available tickets without signing in. For Pete's sake, I just wanted to see prices and availability, but oh no they had to set up the requisite hoops to jump through... This was opening day of ticket sales, maybe don't have to go through all that now that the buying frenzy is over, IDK -- I lost interest in going because of the experience.

Why does having to sign in displease you?

I suspect the site requires that step to protect itself from bots. That protects customers too.

" Why does having to sign in displease you? "

Allowing them to collect my data in exchange for just the ability to see ticket prices and availability displeases me too. Signing in to purchase makes sense, for tracking and security, but our data is valuable, and I want something valuable in return - seeing if there are any decent seats left for a concert doesn't quality, in my opinion.

" but our data is valuable "

Don't flatter yourself, your individual info that any company would concern itself with is one anonymous small data bit of millions that on its own is of no value. Companies have long kept generic stats on customers in order to be responsive to their markets and perform better. You may not have known that.

If you were to offer your quid pro quo proposition to them, the response (after silently laughing at you) would likely be something along the lines of "we're sorry you feel that way, we conduct our business how we do. Feel free to buy your tickets from scalpers or in the limited circumstances when possible, by going to the trouble to purchase them at a ticket window. For cash."

The world is how it is. If interacting over the internet with responsible companies bothers you, your alternative is to stay off the internet.

I just saw Maroon 5 is coming to town and I thought maybe I'd go, so I went to the website in question and interestly I could see seat availability and ticket price without signing in. Which is how it should be IMO. Curiosity got me, so I then looked for tickets for the other group I referenced above and today I can see ticket price and availability without signing in. So maybe it does have to do with the fact it was "opening day" for tickets when I first checked.

Regardless, I'm not going to either. One is just too pricey for me, even the not-great seats are going for more than I want to pay. I can get reasonably priced tickets for Maroon 5, but the show is next week when I'll be flush in with Thanksgiving hosting preparations and a bunch of other stuff going on so the timing isn't great. Oh well, maybe another time.

ETA: Most of the tickets available for both shows were directly from T***etM***er, not as many from "verified resale tickets".

" we're sorry you feel that way, we conduct our business how we do. "

A perfectly reasonable response. They do what they want to do, and I do what I want to do. I don't expect them to change how they do things because of how I feel about it. I make my choices and accept the consequences of those choices.

" Companies have long kept generic stats on customers in order to be responsive to their markets and perform better "

Yup, and they get less generic and more specific all the time - now often using that data to focus their offerings and prices. They can use information on your computers to set prices and offer different specials; they can "recommend" different things to you based on your computer and its history, even if you've never been to that site before. Two people in different locations on different machines can get different information about products, prices, and availability.

All that marketing information is valuable - no, not on an individual basis, but in the aggregate. You can choose to be part of that aggregate or not. We are the product as much as we are the purchaser.

" They can use information on your computers to set prices and offer different specials; "

Websites do not have general access to anything on a visitor's PC. Nothing except the presence or absence of cookies telling of other sites you've visited, but only if you permit that. It's easy to block and anyway, if you have your browsers set to the recommended setting of clearing data when shut down, no site today knows what sites you visited yesterday or before.

Better to clear cache and not allow third party cookies, I think that would resolve your concern.

Hey, Lars! I’ve missed you.

" Websites do not have general access to anything on a visitor's PC. Nothing except the presence or absence of cookies telling of other sites you've visited, but only if you permit that."

Nope.....They have access to the type of computer, location, browser and speed, and even weird things like screen size and resolution. As well as what other sites the computer has visited and what was done when there. All of that information can be compiled and used to form a consumer profile of the computer user (not personal identifiable information, but information on whomever uses the computer).

Do you remember when a website was accused of pricing items higher and using different algorithms for Mac users than for PC users, because they reasoned that people using Macs would spend more than people using PCs?

Not all cookies can be disabled, of course. Clearing browser cache's would help; using a VPN can hide location and what you do at a website, but it won't hide details about the computer itself.

You're full of misinformation, whether unwittingly or intentionally. It's happened with you before. I'm not motivated to respond.

Elmer, the next time you don't feel motivated to respond, I suggest that you just scroll on by, and ignore the comment that provoked you.

sushipup, this person has a history of intentional and baseless belligerence. Subtracting rather than adding to conversations. I acknowledge it but am not baited.

" I acknowledge it but am not baited. "

LOL.

I have not stated anything in that post that is incorrect.

" According to CHATGPT there is a lot in your post less then right. "

Ya lost me right there, and I didn't read anything further. I won't trust ChatGPT (or any generative AI) as far as I can throw it. Generative AI has a "hallucination" rate (i.e. an error rate) well into the double digits.