The ugly face of Capitalism
For reasons more to do with generating fake hysteria than running a fair and efficient process, the organisers elected to put the tickets on sale at 9:00am. On a Friday morning. When the majority of buyers would be at school, college or work. Genius.
So, CF and Mrs CF duly fired up their computers, grabbed their 'phones and dived in.
What a total waste of fucking time that was. Pathetic.
Every one of the 'official' websites selling tickets ground to a complete halt under the load. Screens timed out, queue positions changed at random, and key pages disappeared. The 'phones, of course, were perpetually engaged.
Clearly some people were getting tickets, but there seemed no way through this impenetrable wall of fuck-up.
Then, by 9:30, the screens began to refresh a little more quickly. Why? Because the fucking tickets had sold out. Without even getting as far as being able to enter credit card details, CF had missed the boat.
But then, what's this? A few minutes later, not even 10 o'clock yet, Google finds a load of tickets, newly available. Just not through the official sites. No. Through ebay, Seatwave and all the other ticket re-selling services.
Only funnily enough, they were no longer available at 140 quid. Oh no. Suddenly, the cheapest weekend ticket was being resold at nearly 250 quid. Way beyond CFette #2's budget.
So, a whole shitload of the people swamping the websites and blocking the 'phone lines were not doing so to get tickets to see their favourite bands, to enjoy a day of music. No. They were hoping to make an easy 50 quid (yeah, the re-selling sites take the rest) for a morning of 'phoning or surfing.
Thanks very much, guys.
While he should probably take a more mature attitude, and recognise that everyone has a right to indulge in this kind of speculation, in reality CF hopes the money fucking chokes you.
Bastards.
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7 comments:
Remember Its the Entertainment business, full of useless lazy cokeheads.
Awww. Sympathies to C-fette. I would probably have paid anyway - on the basis that there are cuntly bastids every which way you look anyway, I had the money, and sprog had put in the moneysworth of effort to go.
At least this is relatively cheap. Son Numero Uno is currently negotiating for a Camps International Borneo expedition for summer 2011, after his GCSEs. The price? An eye-watering £3,450.
I've always wondered why festival tickets aren't bought with a photograph of the person who will be using it. Pretty simple system that seems to have worked for Rage Against the Machine's gig.
It's only 'ugly' if you didn't get one at the lower price.
stay away from 'double 8 tickets' - utter c**ts and possibly fraudulent.
It has always struck me as utterly mad that the initial ticket sellers for such events only sell at a flat rate, despite demand inevitably outstripping supply. They are actually losing money by not capturing the cash sequestered by the touts, and if they could do so they would be able to subsidize some tickets for specific groups if they so desired.
The only problem here is that the tickets are too cheap in the first place.
People like to come up with these ideas of linking a ticket to the original purchaser's record in the national DNA database or shooting people who re-sell tickets on sight, but the fact is that there is instant profit to be made because demand outstrips supply on a vast scale. The only way to fix that, short of having more or larger festivals, is to sell at an appropriate price such that it doesn't.
It's perfectly reasonable to re-sell at ticket that you bought. It might be necessary, e.g. if something comes up that prevents you from going.
These ridiculous scenes of overloaded web sites and telephone systems, which remind me of a mass punch-up over the last loaf of bread in the supermarket, should happen once and once only. The sellers should realise just how much money they're losing by pricing too low, and fix it for next time.
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