Yes because the security of barcodes and screenshotted tickets were such a huge problem before. Paying customers used to constantly miss out on events because someone else had already gotten in with their ticket. /s
Yes because the security of barcodes and screenshotted tickets were such a huge problem before.
I think what you just described is actually a problem. Friends of my parents were visiting somewhere, bought tickets to a show from a reseller, met up with the seller (normal looking guy, no red flags, gave some plausible story why he was selling) and paid cash for printed out tickets with barcodes. Printouts looked legit, dates on the printouts were correct, etc. Went to the doors, tried to scan their tickets, got told that unfortunately they’d just been scammed. The impression they get from the box office worker is that this sort of bad news is something they’ve had to deliver frequently. Anecdotal, but I doubt those friends of my parents were the only ones to get scammed in this way. TicketMaster still sucks as an organization but the extra security of rotating barcodes does serve a legitimate security purpose, just like the rotating security codes generated by an authenticator app.
Airlines have recently been having problems with stowaways using screenshots of boarding pass barcodes or QR codes too. Such stowaways should get caught before departure by passenger headcounts or boarding ID checks, but clearly there are gaps or breakdowns in these procedures because some of these stowaways are getting caught at the destination. Others may have successfully flown for free. If it keeps happening I bet we’ll see rotating barcodes come to mobile boarding passes too, if that hasn’t already happened.
I mean, that’s sorta on them for buying from a scalper-at-best
(Still, fuck Ticketmaster)
Oh yes, I don’t mean to absolve them of any blame. They treated it as an expensive lesson, which is probably the best way for them to process it.
Also while TicketMaster is going to sell this as being an “enhanced security” thing, it’s pretty obvious that increased security is only a side benefit for them. Their angle in this is getting more control over the tickets they sell. As long as there are many people who want to go than can physically fit in a venue, there will be a reselling market for event tickets. TicketMaster wants to take a cut of these downstream transactions.
While the security of rotating barcodes does hinder outright scams, mobile wallets normally allow wallet users to transfer items like tickets to another user if the ticket issuer allows it. TicketMaster does not allow this for their tickets, of course, because it could allow someone to resell tickets while cutting TicketMaster out of the transaction. Currently TM allows transfers using their app, but I’m sure they monitor usage of the feature and clamp down on anyone transferring many tickets. In other words if you try to resell in bulk without using TicketMaster’s own platform (where they get to take a cut), they drop the hammer on you.
Is it not where you are? Here it’s very questionable to buy online tickets as the person could sell them multiple times.
If it’s coming from Ticketmaster I get it, but don’t they resell tickets themselves as well?
They do. In fact they’ve been caught “reselling” tickets at scalper prices without them ever having been sold a first time.
The entire scalping/resale market arguably shouldn’t exist, instead tickets should be refundable within reason, at which point the organiser can issue and sell new tickets.
I’ve got season tickets and I can’t use them, or I bought concert tickets and have a surgery now.
There’s valid reasons to resell tickets, obviously scalping is different though, that’s doing it for profit. Unless I’m mistaken some places have laws for reselling tickets for more than the price in the ticket, so you can’t even scalp, you can only resell regardless.
How close up to door time should you be able to return it so they have a chance to resell it? 24-48 hours would be fine I think, but what if you’re out of that time frame? Thats why reselling exists.
I lived in a small town with a small theatre.
If you couldn’t make a show, you called it in and they’d try to resell your ticket; if they succeed, you we’re refunded. So there was no “due date/time” but the sooner you asked them to resell, the better your odds.
The entire scalping/resale market arguably shouldn’t exist, instead tickets should be refundable within reason, at which point the organiser can issue and sell new tickets.
I had to think about this for a minute, but this is exactly the way to handle it. Don’t allow direct transfers at all. You don’t get to pick who gets your tickets (and therefore scalping can’t exist.). But you still can refund your tickets (maybe with a SMALL fee) up to a couple hours before the event. I hope we don’t need legislation to say they have to be sold for the same price they were originally offered for. We don’t want an incentive for Ticketmaster to steal people’s tickets when a venue sells out.
Over here we use bar codes and QR codes exclusively and they deliver them through whatever method you want — PDF or image in email, text message, download PDF, you can even take a screenshot of the web page after you’re done paying if you want.
Which I’ve done many times (the screenshot thing) esp for things like movie tickets where I don’t bother with creating an account because I don’t go that often. I look up the movie or event, pick the seats, pay, take a screenshot of the QR code, send it to whoever’s going on Whatsapp, done.
I’m not sure I understand what the problem is. The venue already got their money. Either someone will show up to redeem the seat or they won’t, they don’t care either way. And it’s trivial to make sure the codes can’t be faked and that only the first scanned code gets in.
The fact there’s no way to check you’re not getting scammed has actually led to an almost total disappearance of scalping. The only resales happen only through friends or friend of a friend sort of thing.
Every once in a while there’s some organizer who thinks they’re smart and issue paper tickets and those are pretty much the only times you see tickets scalped online or outside the venue the night of the concert.
Season ticket holders resell their tickets all the time for stuff like hockey games they can’t make it too. As you said it’s paper, there isn’t anything stopping them from copying and selling it or emailing multiple people.
This is why reselling places exist, it creates a history for the seller so you know you aren’t getting scammed.
There is still valid reasons to resell tickets, most are non-returnable, so if the person can’t go anymore, why shouldn’t they try and recoup the cost? Sure “scalping” is gone, but not reselling tickets.
Scalping is usually used to refer to the specific act of reselling for profit, what definition are you using here?
Every sporting event I’ve been to in the past few years is exclusively digital tickets. Even the local amateur women’s soccer team.
I’m using scalping with the obvious definition of gouging profit.
I’m saying scalping is enabled by making tickets hard to counterfeit. You can’t criminalize the act of reselling itself but you can deter it by making it inherently untrustworthy. Reselling should be possible, but it needs to stop short of getting out of hand.
When you create a trustworthy ticket resell market you’re basically creating a hotbed of scalping. If people can reliably find clients for ever-increasing ticket prices, then ticket prices will keep going up. That’s exactly what Ticket Nation & friends have done, and they profit by taking a fat percentage.
I, for one, am looking forward to the $.0036 Check in the mail. While some lawyer pockets $97 Billion. Any day now…
Antirust is very different than Class Action (were you’d get a 36cent check). This would be the FTC filing charges, which has much more power.
“give us your personal information so we can sell it quickly before we might lose money”
Good, it’s about time!
I was given a free ticket to an event last night. I did it all using their web page. Their page was very slow and when I finally got to the point where it was supposed to show the ticket, it kept blanking the page right when the bar code would load. Luckily the gentleman at the booth could see it was legitimate and that there was a technical issue, so he printed it out for me.
That monopoly must go.
Another company that will never see my money again. Mastodon and Lemmy are making me save way more money than any financial advisor ever could 🤣
As long as you’re fine with never seeing any live music besides local bands again. Shits a monopoly
The Amazon equivalent for my country does this for their site on mobile by removing filters and making it so anything related to your account just tells you to use the app.
However If you toggle desktop mode in your browser everything works perfectly fine. It’s almost as if they just want to data mine you. Surely no company would have that as a motive!
Sadly, I tried desktop mode in Firefox and still got the pop-up
I’d say just use a different service but, uh… What other service is there? 😟
Looks like AXS.com may be an alternate, found it through bandsintown.com
// By the sounds of it, no, just a duopoly
AXS is no better as far as ticket scalpers go. Used them for Cruel World fest last year, they’re just another version of Ticketmaster. Maybe marginally less invasive app-wise, but as far as jacking up event prices they’re the same.
AXS wouldn’t even mail me a regular paper ticket last year. My only options was to pay $20 extra for a “commemorative” ticket. Fuck AXS.
Ticket stubs as a souvenir are a thing of the past, unfortunately. It’s laughable they want to charge for “commemorative” stubs, of course the want to fuck people out of even more money for already ridiculously priced events.
Axs is worse
They force you to download the app. You can get around it with ticketmaster sometimes
AXS doesn’t let you put their tickets into digital wallet.
DICE is great, but most of these are tied to venues. Most of the bigger stages, stadiums, theaters, etc. all have contracts through LiveNation, so TicketMaster/LiveNation is the only way to enter those venues.
You can sometimes call the box office directly though.
dice too gives you tickets in their app
https://dicefm.zendesk.com/hc/en-gb/articles/22367835146513-Why-we-ask-you-to-download-our-app
“why we ask you to download an application”
- we want to mine your data
- we want to mine your data
- you need to give us this data
- come on you’ll love being datamined
Well if they want people’s data from having their app they should give heavily discounted tickets 👁️👁️👁️🤣🤣🤣🤔🤔🤔🫡🫡🫡🙄🙄🙄
You’re talking about the same company that charges a “convenience” fee for ordering online. Then if you decide to go to buy them in person you charge a “facilities” fee.
how is this legal?
Because we live in corporate ruled kleptocracies masquerading as democracies.
Democracy can never exist in a two party system.
Oooh, nah, let’s just do both!
I’ve seen my last show
It’s really sad because the artists have little to no control over this. It is the venues who are contracted through Ticketmaster.
I remember Pearl Jam suing them for this in the 90s. Unfortunately, Pearl Jam lost and here we are 30 years later still dealing with their monopolistic tactics.
It’s really sad because the artists have little to no control over this. It is the venues who are contracted through Ticketmaster.
Yeah, it’s like if every movie theater only used Fandango. It would be ridiculous if that was the case, yet that’s what’s happened to live events.
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How the hell would you double dip? They scan you in.
I built a ticketing app for folk festivals 2 decades ago and we had that problem beat even then.
Sure, they can you on, but which patron is the real patron?
Suppose the ticket was supplied as a PDF. Then it is either in the users Downloads directory or in their email. If that PDF is obtained by a malicious actor, it could be resold countless times. You could have 100 “guests” arrive at a venue with a bogus ticket but only the first one gets in, because they were scanned. That first person may not be the legitimate ticket owner.
Now, if your using their app, they usually put an animation over the barcode, and the gate attendants know to look for that. If that animation isn’t there, don’t scan. Pretty simple instructions to give to anyone. And accessing the app likely requires logging in, probably with some form of MFA (though probably SMS), so it gets a lot more difficult to rip off both the legitimate users and Ticketmaster in this way.
I don’t like having to use a specific app for things like this, but “I kinda get it”.
Now, it’d be better if we had a universal standard format for putting secure, validated passes into the native phone app. Perhaps registering your device to your account via their website, then only allowing the ticket to be installed on one device. I’m sure there’d be more to it, im just spitballing.
There you go, assuming the problem is worth the corporation’s time and money to bother solving. The correct answer is to not bother hiring a customer support department and telling people that they’re SOL when stuff goes wrong. The goal is to take in more money than you spend on customer support, so you spend none.
PGP-encrypted email for everyone, problem solved.
Yah, yah, I know…
Actually think this is more about protecting against unscrupulous scalpers selling tickets multiple times.
When you can just email a pdf or print it, nothing stops you from doing it multiple times.
At the end, it’s ticketbastard that has to listen to the people that got scammed. This method forces authentication and secure the chain of custody.
Mfa does make sense here tbh. I’m more upset by their outrageous fees and monopoly.
Change a number. Then when they scan it you claim it’s an error and then you are dealing with a “technology problem”.
AXS does not integrate with google wallet. I put a note in each calendar event which app the tickets are in. At least the Pixel phones now let you put anything in your wallet that is a QR code. I wish it would let us put plain old images in the wallet.
It makes me so mad that there are so many artists I cannot see because they only offer tickets through this scam. Billy Joel has been a lifelong bucket list artist, and I can’t go see his tour because of this bullshit.
Oh well, I’ll continue going to concerts using tickets sold by the venue.
I hate Ticket master with passion. It’s a personal life goal to see this disgusting business die.
You and me both
You can use your phone’s browser to access the ticket. From https://help.livenation.com/hc/en-us/articles/9907955578129-How-do-I-use-Mobile-Entry-tickets
How do I find and use my tickets?
On a mobile browser:
- Open a web browser app and go to Ticketmaster.com.
- Sign into your My Account.
- Tap the circle in the top right and tap Upcoming Events.
- Find your order and tap View Tickets to access your tickets. We recommend adding your tickets to a digital wallet so that you’ll always have your ticket on hand.
- Your phone’s your ticket — scan it at the venue entrance and you’re in!
Also, if the event isn’t Mobile-only, you can select a different option for your ticket. See https://help.livenation.com/hc/en-us/articles/9902009367953-How-are-tickets-delivered for more details.
That doesn’t work anymore. If you follow those instructions you’ll receive the pop-up I posted.
Yup, found this out at Dead & Co in SF last summer. Had to stand off to the side with my wife and 2 friends while downloading the app and going through the bullshit high off my ass with an army of deadheads behind us.
I did exactly that in February.
The thing didn’t scan right anyway, likely due to my phone being a filthy potato with a gradually failing protective screen.
What happens when you click the “Next” button down at the bottom right?
If it doesn’t take you to your ticket then that sounds like a bug. Definitely a frustrating one; hopefully not intentional.
Clicking Next redirects you to the App/Play Store
Haven’t bought anything on Ticketmaster or their owned companies in years. And I generally go to 2 to 5 live shows a month.
This and their policy towards VPNs means I won’t support them.
where do you buy your tickets?
Directly from many venues. And some ticket sellers that aren’t owned by them. Some smaller venues use them, and some artsier places.
But for the mega concerts, I just don’t go where Ticketmaster holds the venue contract. I fly and see who I want elsewhere.
I’d ask for a refund
Even NFTs would be better than this.
NFTs and Crypto/blockchain have some really good usecases. Unfortunately everyone one that shills them is a hustle bro type.
Unless they’re dealing dope on the DNM. Then they’re professional suppliers that want their product to generate as much as possible an oncoming, long term relationships that are respected for their strength in security and quality. You’re about as likely to get fentanyl in your meth when you buy from regular long term vendors as you get real professionals on the street that won’t stab you in the back; literally *and * metaphorically.
Im lost, whats all this about?
Dealing dope ain’t bad business because the nature of the acts potential only perpetrates damage on the community. It’s because the damn-near-century of the dope parade of prosecution trick you not looking down the scope of understanding. Liars and denials of all trues of value spin the product responsible for anything at all to save your life and ignoring the blatantly obvious paint of something less than an object even being able to make a choice like you or I.
Objects do not make choices. Your choices, when blamed on “addiction” (a completely nonexistant concept just like objects able to make choices and will) is at least a misleading denial of the truth if not a deceptive trick to give you ideas that have value determining your will.
That might sound ridiculous but that’s be cause it is. Drugs don’t make choices. You, people, make choices. Every fucking word the DEA says does absolutely nothing but gamble on the viability of the life of everyone. Everyone loses because objects will never have will, make a choice, or perceive the truth.
They aren’t trying to win the inevitable death path. They’re fucking paving it via baking the planet, infecting everything and everyone everywhere, simulating intelligence with an object of no real similarity to usual and with zero true understanding of what intelligence even is, let alone how.
Denying women’s right to do better than what we call ruling or leadership, because none of us have ever done that truely even in our last 12ky, is the very source of this collective suicide.
There will be drugs. You will do them and die. But the suicide is from the dope. It’s the Karma of denying women’s their rights when they hold that chains of all your skulls on their neck.
What the fuck are you talking about, how is this a reply to NFT use cases.
NFTs aren’t inherently bad. Ethereum is however inherently bad.
Can’t you use NFTs on any blockchain?
NFTs require arbitrary data storage, which not all blockchains support (or are prohibitively expensive).
In theory, yes but most people associate NFTs with the ETH.
