Word of Warning about Ticketmaster surfing!

[philtex]

Some of you out there may already be aware of this.. but unfortunately I was not. On the 1st when the presale for the first Dallas show went on sale, I spent about 20 or 30 minutes on the ticketmaster site, looking at various options trying to find the "perfect" tickets: do I buy 4?, what section?, do I buy 2 higher priced seats?, etc. However, at one point I realized the site was no longer working & when I tried to log on using various computers at my house, it would not let me back in! I figured the site was just temporarily down so I continued trying & actually called Ticketmaster to confirm the site was functioning. Anyway- I ended up going to a public computer so it would not recognize my IP address & was able to log on, but my presale code would no longer function! Apparently, if you spend too much time looking for tickets on their site or looking at too many pages, they have security measures that identify you as phishing or trying to somehow cheat the system. I finally saw in fine print at the bottom of their site: "prohibit using automatic processes to access this web site or requesting excessively large amounts of web pages"
So basically I spent a very frustrating day making many phone calls and emails to both ticketmaster and to the police tour site. I have seen the Police twice (growing up, they along with U2 and XTC, were my faves) and never thought I would get the chance again. Thankfully my code worked the following day once they reset it. And magically, after looking at several sad options of upper third-level seats, I actually scored a pair of lower level seats (103) directly on the side of the stage (row Y, which I am praying is only about 25 rows up) What I do not know is if there are any major obstructions on the side of the stage- so I will either have an unbeliveable view, or I could be staring at a big stack of amps!

[cpriddims]

Same thing here!

After I bought tickets for Tampa with my Best Buy code, I searched about 25 times for better seats with my Fan Club code.

At one point, I could no longer get in. I asked my IT guy at work and he said I was being blocked by Ticketbastard.

People beware!!

[Divemistress of the Dark]

Hey guys, I realize it's a shocker when it happens, but this is getting to be oft-trod territory over on TPT.com.

Couple things you can do.

1.) Disconnect from the Internet, reconnect - renews your IP lease
2.) Call up your ISP and ask them to reset your IP address
3.) Get hold of a program like Netshade for the Mac, which allows you to use a proxy server.

I know this is gaming the system, technically, but it's been posted a bunch of times already and the horse is already out of the barn, I think...

Most folks report you get about a half hour of tries before you're blocked. One guy said he got booted after about ten tries, though.