Ticketmaster

Has to be the worst way to buy a ticket! Tried to get tickets to Adele concert 10 months out. Went on line at the exact moment the tickets went on sale. Rejected my efforts to get a ticket no matter what I tried to do to make the process work. Hours later I went back to get the tickets and the only way I could get them was to accept whatever they would give me. I guess I should feel privileged to have been granted two obstructed view seats at over 100 dollars each, then taxes!
What a pathetic operation. Never again. I would give them zero stars but Unilocal won’t let me.

I hate this evil monopoly!
I just paid $ 13.60 in service charges for an Arcade Fire ticket whose face value was $ 30. Uh, that’s a 45% markup! My transaction was completely automated on their end. So I have no idea what extra services they’re charging me for. And they would have charged me even more if I had printed the ticket myself (using my own printer and paper).
Ticketmaster gouges us because they can: they have a monopoly on sales at many venues including Verizon Center, DAR Constitution Hall, Merriweather Post, the Black Cat, and the Birchmere. However there are a couple ways to get around Ticketmaster. If a show won’t sell out right away, then it might be worth it to hike to the venue’s box office in person to avoid the Ticketmaster fees. Another option is to wade into the Craigslist/​eBay/​scalper market. It can get sketchy, true, but it’s often worth it. I’ve found that Wizards tix, for example, tend to be cheaper in this black market than on Ticketmaster, in part because so many season ticket holders are willing to sell at a discount.
Often, though, we consumers have no choice but to use Ticketbastards. So evil.
The website shuts you out if, at 10am sharp, you refresh too quickly in succession– but how else are you supposed to get high-​demand seats that sell out in 30 seconds? (Tip: If they do shut you out, try opening a second browser– e. g if you’re on IE, open Firefox and try again, and vice versa — sometimes they’ll let you in again). Nor does the site let you do simple stuff like request aisle seats or particular sections or anything like that — we’re supposed to just trust that the computer is providing the ‘best’ seats. I also suspect that the seat assignment program is a little messed up – for example today, pairs sold out in like 30 seconds but there were plentiful singles for a long time afterwards — is there something about the assignment system that assumes people like to sit by themselves far away from their friends? The website also makes you fill out all the forms within a minute or two, so typing is kind of stressful unless you enjoy pretending you’re Chloe O’Brian on 24.