OT - Phish fans furious at Vile Nation

[TheEqualizer]

This is a big surprise . . . NOT

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/i ... ting-test/

QUOTE

When tickets for Phish’s reunion tour went on sale Friday, the event became the first major test for Live Nation’s new ticketing service — and according to reports across the Internet, the concert giant failed to deliver as countless fans encountered a system unready for the throng of Phishheads scrambling for tickets to one of the year’s most anticipated tours. Massive traffic to the Live Nation page caused the site to freeze up, often during purchases, resulting in users losing the tickets they were in the process of buying.

“At the moment of the onsale, there were 1 million people trying to buy tickets, and that overwhelmed the system for a minute,” a Live Nation spokesman tells Rolling Stone (for more on Live Nation’s ticketing launch, see the next issue, on newsstands this Wednesday). “We sold all the tickets to all the shows. At the end of the day, it was successful.”

From a customer satisfaction perspective, however, it’s hard to argue the Phish sale went well. Fans on message boards have reported numerous technical glitches, ranging from a message that read “There was a problem. An error occurred. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again” to unreadable CAPTCHAs (the random words you type in to confirm you’re a person and not a scalping machine) that ultimately resulted in no tickets. And we thought those $13.50 service fees were the service’s biggest drawback.

A post on Jamptopia calls the sale an “epic fail.” “While I’m all for a little competition in the marketplace, I gotta tell you the past few days made me nostalgic for my old pal Ticketmaster,” added Todd Levy in his post.

Rock Daily was also stung by Live Nation’s ticketing problems during attempts to purchase Phish tickets. We had to enter and reenter our credit card information three times while trying to get tickets to the band’s June 5th show in Wantagh, New York, and all three times after we went to check out, we were greeted by a Error 404 page and another long stay in the so-called “waiting room.” We were already signed into our Live Nation account, but when it came time to buy the tickets we had to sign in again, which resulted in another long loading time while the countdown clock kept ticking down. Ultimately, the purchases weren’t completed in time and our tickets went back into the pool. Phone calls to Live Nation during the ticket buying process were greeted with one ring, 40 seconds of silence and a disconnection.

END QUOTE

Trey should scrap the Phish reunion tour and just do a quick mini-Oysterhead tour.

[samburusunset]

Oy! What a mess!





(Keep at it, Rob. Maybe the Maestro will come down from the ivory tower long enough to sit in on a few shows)

[smudge]

[quote="TheEqualizer"]This is a big surprise . . . NOT

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/i ... ting-test/

QUOTE

"We had to enter and reenter our credit card information three times while trying to get tickets to the band’s June 5th show in Wantagh, New York, and all three times after we went to check out, we were greeted by a Error 404 page and another long stay in the so-called “waiting room.” ....... "Phone calls to Live Nation during the ticket buying process were greeted with one ring, 40 seconds of silence and a disconnection. "

END QUOTE

Trey should scrap the Phish reunion tour and just do a quick mini-Oysterhead tour.[/quote]

Oh good gong. JB3 - The Nightmare Continues. So sorry for anyone caught up in that clusterfuck.

I know there are groups of people out there already, on many continents, trying to get this nonsense stopped (I mean the ticket nonsense, not the Phish thing). But I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm about to start giving my elected representatives grief. Possibly futile, but if anyone else is doing the same, or thinking about it, drop me an email. Strikes me that an international approach may be required

And good luck PhishHeads.

[Susan]

I was wondering how Vile Nation was going to do with ticket sales, and guess what--they are handling U2 ticket sales this time around. Yeah, good luck with THAT.

Anyway, the Bruce ticket mess was covered briefly by a local radio station:
http://www.1010wins.com/Springsteen-Fan ... tc/3779659

But see, they just repeat what they're told and are not really looking into the story.

[IndyGirl]

[quote="Susan"]I was wondering how Vile Nation was going to do with ticket sales, and guess what--they are handling U2 ticket sales this time around. Yeah, good luck with THAT.[/quote]

Ugh. Just what I want to look forward to, a ticket fiasco. (Crosses fingers & hopes the ticket buying service issues get worked out soon but realizes they probably won't)

[sockii]

I had horrendous problems with Vile Nation's ticketing service for Morrissey's show in Philly in March, which went on sale this past Saturday. Fortunately I ended up finding a way to buy tickets directly through the Academy of Music on-line directly instead...but it still cost me about 20 minutes wasted time therefore I ended up with a pretty shit ticket for my efforts... but I was getting nowhere at all except a stalled out "overload" message from Vile Nation.

*sigh*

EPIC FAIL certainly are the words that come immediately to my mind. And that wasn't even a huge event compared to say Phish or U2...

[sixteenlaps]

my friend was on the losing end of a battle with ticketbastard in an effort to surprise her sister with Bruce tickets. She was online right when they went on sale and ended up coming away empty handed because of error pages

[conroy]

All I can say is that if Oysterhead ever goes on tour again, I hope it does not involve Vile Nation. Otherwise, I'm not bothering with it unless someone can come up with another way for nutters to get tix.

ETA: http://www.reuters.com/article/industry ... LN20090204

Just heard this on the radio. Just when you think it couldn't get any worse. Vile Nation and Ticketbastard are talking about a merger.

[Susan]

Vile Nation's stock price is below $5 a share (it was above $24 the week the Police reunion was announced). They are probably not going to invest a great deal more in their IT infrastructure to make sales better. U2 sold its stock (getting its guaranteed profit, which they company could no longer afford). I have already lowered my expectations as far as how much of U2 I am going to see this year and that's more money in MY pocket.

http://www.ticketnews.com/Former-Live-N ... tock109231

I do wonder why they decided to do this at this time. It's also interesting to note that LN was to take over operations of U2's fan club and web site and as of yesterday, nothing had changed. Membership renewals are even on hold. Clearly the BAND is not breaking up so what's going on?

Someone at work joked that perhaps Vile Nation will ask the Police for a bailout by doing another reunion tour.

[Susan]

Oh but wait, there's more. This was just forwarded by someone at work with the subject line "!!!!"

NEWS ALERT
from The Wall Street Journal

Feb. 3, 2009

Ticketmaster Entertainment and Live Nation are close to a merger, in a deal that would consolidate two of the most powerful forces in the music industry under one roof.

The newly created company would be called Live Nation Ticketmaster, and would combine the world's biggest concert promoter with the world's dominant ticketing and artist-management company. The combined firm would be able to take advantage of close relationships with hundreds of major artists to find new ways to do business in the ailing music industry.

For more information: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djemalertNEWS

[policerule]

“We sold all the tickets to all the shows. At the end of the day, it was successful.”

Successful for who? I love it when they say that shit.

Susan: Someone at work joked that perhaps Vile Nation will ask the Police for a bailout by doing another reunion tour.


Nice.

[njperry]

A merger of Vile Nation and TicketMonster? I can only imagine how great thier service will be if they are monopoly.

[OutlandoGirl]

I read an interview with the CEO (or some bigwig) of LN and he was a total spin doctor! Very smarmy. Backpeddaling about the "transparency" of fees and other crap. He was saying that LV is going to be all about the customer but it was EXTREMELY easy to read between the lines and see that it's really going to be all about LN profit!

The rumor of the TM LN merger has been all over the U2 fan list serves, etc. U2 fans are fanatic about tickets. I predict a lot of freaking out.

[sockii]

[quote="njperry"]A merger of Vile Nation and TicketMonster? I can only imagine how great thier service will be if they are monopoly.[/quote]

I guess we can start calling them VileBastard, then?

[animal]

[quote="sockii"][quote="njperry"]A merger of Vile Nation and TicketMonster? I can only imagine how great thier service will be if they are monopoly.[/quote]

I guess we can start calling them VileBastard, then?[/quote]

Niiiiiicccccccccceeeeee!!