Ok, so anyone who has ever purchased tickets to anything through Ticketmaster probably already knows this outfit is a scam from start to finish. The best seats are never available to the public, the fees are outrageous, and they essentially have a monopoly on the ticket purchasing industry. Today, however, they have hit a new low. Even for them this is disgraceful. This will likely be more of a short tirade and a request for information and help than an actual diary, but I thought I would get this story out there in case there is any recourse, or just to make people aware what is occurring.
Van Halen tickets went on sale today for their show at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. I go to a lot of concerts and try to catch all of the bigger name acts as they come through the Philadelphia area. I know my way around all of the pre-sale and other Ticketmaster nonsense pretty well. I actually saw Van Halen the last time they were in Philadelphia so I wasn't all that excited about seeing them again. Some friends of mine wanted to go, however, so I figured I would get the tickets for everyone. My plan was to get lower priced tickets just to get in the door.
The tickets went on sale at 10am and I was online ready to get them. There were four different price points for tickets. The lowest two price points continually came up as "not available". Take note that "not available" is different than "sold out" as this becomes important later on. So because the two lowest price points were unavailable, and because I wanted tickets to the show, I expanded my search to the next highest price point. This was a $30plus increase from the price I was originally trying to purchase. These tickets were available, so I purchased them.
30 minutes later I went back on Ticketmaster's site to see if the show had sold out yet, and I find out that there are many, many tickets now available at the lower price point. I called Ticketmaster to explain the situation and attempt to exchange the tickets I bought for the lower priced tickets. They said that was against their policy, but they would be more than happy to exchange them for higher priced tickets.
I then accused them of purposely selling the higher priced tickets first until they were sold out before releasing the lower priced tickets. They actually admitted that this is what went on, but still refused to exchange the tickets. They said they sell the tickets the way the promoter asks them to, and that once their sold, there are no refunds or downward exchanges. They then refused to tell me who the promoter is.
So here's my questions. Is this legal? I know they covered themselves by making me agree to their policies before I bought the tickets, and they also never said the tickets were sold out. They only said they were unavailable, without an explanation as to why. Are there any authorities that I can inform of this situation that may actually help me?
I guess even if there is no one that can help, hopefully I've made someone else aware of this new Ticketmaster scam.