Will the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger be good for customers? Why of course it will! Just take a look at this awesome purchasing experience Ticketmaster managed to provide recently:

My story is from Jan 31 2009 when I logged onto Ticketmaster at 9:59am for Jimmy Buffett at DTE Aug 13 2009 and I unknowingly was redirected to TicketsNow to complete my purchase that I still thought was Ticketmaster. After a few minutes and receiving confirmation of my order I realized someting was wrong. I paid $877 for 2 Seats. My timestamp on my purchase was 10:02AM. Two minutes after tickets went on sale. Tickets now policy is they will not sell any tickets that are not in their hand (I have the email from their customer service agent). Also the seats they sold me do not exist. My row goes up to 50 and they sold me 99 & 100. I called DTE today to confirm that yes those seats do not exist.

We don’t know if there was a glitch or if Diana simply wasn’t familiar with TicketsNow and didn’t realize Ticketmaster was pushing her to their secondary ticket market, but it illustrates one of the problems with Ticketmaster operating its own secondary ticket market and connecting it with regular ticket sales so seamlessly. We won’t even go into the issue of how tickets could be available for “resale” at more or less the exact same time they went on sale to the general public.

Diana and her husband are now looking at their options for getting a refund, but in the meantime she just wants to get the word out about what happened. “I know what the mistake did to our family emotionally and mentally. I do not want to see anyone experience this too.”

If the tickets are for seats that don’t exist, Diana, they’re not authentic tickets and you should be able to get 100% of your money back. Also see here.

YOu should also see this page, where TicketsNow announces that they will no longer allow tickets to be posted for resale until after the initial tickets go on sale. Unfortunately, this change was announced just last week, a bit late for your purchase, but you might still want to contact them and point out the obvious problems with your purchase.

(Photo: Don_Gato)

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