Brian Sullivan wrote:
thenightfish wrote:
Maccaroni1974 wrote
How could you buy the wrong tickets? How is this possible when it tells you the seat row price? Then you have to go through MULTIPLE screens prior to closing the purchase. I have never seen so many confused people buying tix than on this board. Its a a fairly simple proces.. Login to your TM account..enter the PROPER presale password...you can FILTER out the type of seats you want...and DONT WANT IE Platinum Tix, VIP TIx, etc. Select and purchase. DONE. I got tix to NJ and Hollywood. Done in 10 min..
You were lucky and you must have been first one in the queue.. I have been using TM for a very long time, for many popular artists other than Paul, and this was one of the worst presales I have ever experienced. It took 7 minutes for the idiotic queue to even let me look at tickets. And selecting tickets is "easy" until TM pulls that phantom nonsense about "these tickets have already been selected by another fan" after clicking on a ticket that looks like it is available. I tried for 3 shows and only got tickets for one. Granted, I am extremely picky and won't buy what I don't like, but the seats I wanted never turned up.
Platinum tickets is how TM has decided to play the scalper game, those are not resales. Those are TM seats that they have priced at "market value." Ridiculous. They have had Platinum for years, with static prices that were higher than face but not crazy, but there seem to be more of them now, and their prices are out of control. But they want you to panic-buy from them and not the secondary market.
Nightfish,
I can understand your disappointment and frustration over what I agree are eye-popping prices for "dynamically priced" platinum tickets, but I don't think TM is responsible.
According to the TM website, official platinum seats are made available by artists and event organizers through TM, the goal being "to give the most passionate fans fair and safe access to the best tickets, while enabling artists and other people involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true market value." In other words, if someone (not me) is willing to pay $5000 to sit front row center, the performer and/or promoter have decided that they want to receive that $5000 rather than a scalper who purchases the ticket at a lower price and then resells it. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that McCartney or his promoter, AEG, would allow TM to scalp the tickets, and equally unlikely that AEG would do so without McCartney's consent.
Perhaps I am mistaken. If so, can you (or someone else) tell me why you think it is TM rather than McCartney and/or AEG that is profiting from the practice of selling "dynamically priced" platinum tickets?
Well, it is ultimately TM profiting because they and their parent company, Live Nation, don't do anything that they can't profit from. So the fact that they even offer this platinum option to artists in the first place is on them. If Paul chose to use it, then yes, he is part of the problem too, and it's disappointing. I did find the web page where they present to artists how profitable this option can be for them, tho I don't have the link handy just now.