Presale Questions/Problems - Wed AM - Post Them Here

[tespey]

Post your questions or issues with the presale here and your fellow fans will try to help you and Mellencamp.com will be checking this thread every few minutes.

BEFORE POSING A QUESTION REREAD THE FOLLOWING PAGES

They have been updated extensively and include most answers.
http://www.mellencamp.com/news.html?n_id=718
http://www.mellencamp.com/news.html?n_id=733

PASSWORDS WILL APPEAR 10 MINUTES BEFORE THE PRE SALE BEGINS REFRESH YOUR BROWSER ON THE TOUR PAGE TO SEE THEM WHEN YOU ARE LOGGED IN

[TonyBClubManager]

Post your questions or issues with the presale here and your fellow fans will try to help you and Mellencamp.com will be checking this thread every few minutes.

BEFORE POSING A QUESTION REREAD THE FOLLOWING PAGES

They have been updated extensively and include most answers.
http://www.mellencamp.com/news.html?n_id=718
http://www.mellencamp.com/news.html?n_id=733

PASSWORDS WILL APPEAR 10 MINUTES BEFORE THE PRE SALE BEGINS REFRESH YOUR BROWSER ON THE TOUR PAGE TO SEE THEM WHEN YOU ARE LOGGED IN

Your reply was blank.

[jm_walktall]

Thank you, Tony for all of your hard work. I know it couldn't have been easy, especially with all of the changes all at once, but as always, it seemed to work out in the end. Thank you for all that you do =D

[TonyBClubManager]

Thank you, Tony for all of your hard work. I know it couldn't have been easy, especially with all of the changes all at once, but as always, it seemed to work out in the end. Thank you for all that you do =D

THANKS. All of your kind words were very nice to hear after a long day that was part of an extremely long two week or so patch (website! tour! presale! Dylan tour! new album! record promotion! clubcherrybomb!).

[cmlager]

Detroit presale password 'uhhuh' is not working...help!!

[TonyBClubManager]

Detroit presale password 'uhhuh' is not working...help!!

Check the local radio stations. Technically our presale was to end last night with different passwords today. In many cases that has not been what has happened, the password has continued.

Try our password in the other fields available too it might work in the radio or internet presale fields.

[lula]

I purchased tickets "presale" for Mellencamp in Chicago.  
These tickets are WAY to the back of the theater on the left far section.  

Then TODAY, I find if I had waited until today, (the tickets offered to general public) the center section in 5 th row would have been available.  

I tried to swap original tickets.  Per Ticket Master, the promoters will not allow any swapping.  
I asked if I could return and re-purchase.  NO, per Ticket Master, the promoters do not allow this.  
I called and spoke with the Chicago Theater Box Office Manager.  He also said that better tickets were available BUT, according to the promoters, they were not allowed to exchange refund or trade my location.  

I was on hold for almost 2 hours while both ticketmaster and chicago theater checked this and that.  The answer kept coming back as NO.  

They say that Mellencamp's concert makes all the rules and they must abide by them.  

Why would worse tickets be offered at presale than when they go on sale to the general public?  I feel like I was duped into buying "best available" tickets when they were not at all the best available.  Both Ticket Master and the Chicago Box Office Manager said that what tickets are available and when they come up come from the Mellencamp Concert Promoters and they have no control.  They said that the tickets I purchased "were the best being offered at the time". Not necessiarly the best available.  This is misleading and mis represententing. 

I would really appreciate an answer to this question.  

lula

[TonyBClubManager]

I purchased tickets "presale" for Mellencamp in Chicago.  
These tickets are WAY to the back of the theater on the left far section.  

Then TODAY, I find if I had waited until today, (the tickets offered to general public) the center section in 5 th row would have been available.  

I tried to swap original tickets.  Per Ticket Master, the promoters will not allow any swapping.  
I asked if I could return and re-purchase.  NO, per Ticket Master, the promoters do not allow this.  
I called and spoke with the Chicago Theater Box Office Manager.  He also said that better tickets were available BUT, according to the promoters, they were not allowed to exchange refund or trade my location.  

I was on hold for almost 2 hours while both ticketmaster and chicago theater checked this and that.  The answer kept coming back as NO.  

They say that Mellencamp's concert makes all the rules and they must abide by them.  

Why would worse tickets be offered at presale than when they go on sale to the general public?  I feel like I was duped into buying "best available" tickets when they were not at all the best available.  Both Ticket Master and the Chicago Box Office Manager said that what tickets are available and when they come up come from the Mellencamp Concert Promoters and they have no control.  They said that the tickets I purchased "were the best being offered at the time". Not necessiarly the best available.  This is misleading and mis represententing. 

I would really appreciate an answer to this question.  

lula

Here is most of a lengthy answer I gave in another thread that should shed some info on how this all works. It is of note that Chicago has had extreme demand both in the presaale and public on sale, the two shows are essentially sold out at this time.

Lets say we have a show with 3000 tickets and at the moment of on sale there are 500 people/computers/browsers/shopping carts requesting tickets

If all of those request 4 tickets that means you have requested 2000 of the 3000 available tickets (remember not all tickets are available, many are held for the public onsale, other presales, for the band/promotion etc).

That means SOME of those tickets requested, even in the first seconds are not that great.

People then have a few minutes to decide if they want to buy them or not. So often most of the requested tickets sit in online shopping carts while people decide, try to check out etc.

What inevitably happens is a surprising percentage of those tickets requested are NOT purchased and then return to the system.

Remember lots of buyers have multiple windows/browsers/computers pulling up tickets, so one person who wants 4 tickets could be requesting 4 multiple times at the start of the presale to get the ones they want.

This means slowly but surely quality tickets go unpurchased and return to the purchase system between 5 to 20 minutes after the on sale starts.

Unfortunately Ticketmaster and most systems don't let you exchange your tickets. That is not a John Mellencamp rule, that's a system limitation.

All pre-sales offer only a portion of the available tickets, there are always quality tickets sold in the public on sale.

It stinks and is super frustrating to the customer but you can't make people buy the tickets they request if you want to give them the option of seeing/approving their seat locations.

The way around is this how some ticket sites and artists presales sites work (Dave Matthews, Pearl Jam) simply sell the tickets in order of request and assign them by that (or some other way like seniority) HOWEVER people don't find out their seat locations until they are mailed to them.

[lula]

{quote} Unfortunately Ticketmaster and most systems don't let you exchange your tickets. That is not a John Mellencamp rule, that's a system limitation.  {/quote}

In this case, your explanation about the baskets is not what happened. There were pleanty of seats available in the center section all day today.  I was on the phone with ticketmaster for at least 2 hours.  All the while, those tickets were selling.  I watched the best available move from row e to f ......  and to K.  When I finally gave up and realized they were not going to let me change my tickets from one section to another.  TicketMaster's official position is that they would be glad to exchange my tickets.  However, the event promoters would not allow it.

[TonyBClubManager]

{quote} Unfortunately Ticketmaster and most systems don't let you exchange your tickets. That is not a John Mellencamp rule, that's a system limitation.  {/quote}

In this case, your explanation about the baskets is not what happened. There were pleanty of seats available in the center section all day today.  I was on the phone with ticketmaster for at least 2 hours.  All the while, those tickets were selling.  I watched the best available move from row e to f ......  and to K.  When I finally gave up and realized they were not going to let me change my tickets from one section to another.  TicketMaster's official position is that they would be glad to exchange my tickets.  However, the event promoters would not allow it.

Wow, that would be great if they are allowing it now. However in my extensive dealings with Ticketmaster I have never heard of them doing that, just flat out cancelling an order and swapping the tickets for other ones available. At one point in time in the 90's I worked for a ticketmaster subsidiary and two of my best friends are high up at ticketmaster, I feel I know the system pretty well.

Who knows, maybe it all along has been a promoter restriction preventing it, but as far as I know it doesn't happen with ticketmaster shows. Once you buy the tickets they are yours unless the show is canceled or you sell them back to a ticket system endorsed reseller.

Maybe they were also talking about their official reselling system (ticketexchange) which may be prevented for this show per the promoter or John's management for this show.

There are some box offices that will do that will do exchanges in certain situations though, but they tend to be the ones that do the selling directly.

[richm752]

Some people call it "ticketbastard" for a reason.

[eyesontheprize]

{quote} Unfortunately Ticketmaster and most systems don't let you exchange your tickets. That is not a John Mellencamp rule, that's a system limitation.  {/quote}

In this case, your explanation about the baskets is not what happened. There were pleanty of seats available in the center section all day today.  I was on the phone with ticketmaster for at least 2 hours.  All the while, those tickets were selling.  I watched the best available move from row e to f ......  and to K.  When I finally gave up and realized they were not going to let me change my tickets from one section to another.  TicketMaster's official position is that they would be glad to exchange my tickets.  However, the event promoters would not allow it.

Wow, that would be great if they are allowing it now. However in my extensive dealings with Ticketmaster I have never heard of them doing that, just flat out cancelling an order and swapping the tickets for other ones available. At one point in time in the 90's I worked for a ticketmaster subsidiary and two of my best friends are high up at ticketmaster, I feel I know the system pretty well.

Who knows, maybe it all along has been a promoter restriction preventing it, but as far as I know it doesn't happen with ticketmaster shows. Once you buy the tickets they are yours unless the show is canceled or you sell them back to a ticket system endorsed reseller.

Maybe they were also talking about their official reselling system (ticketexchange) which may be prevented for this show per the promoter or John's management for this show.

There are some box offices that will do that will do exchanges in certain situations though, but they tend to be the ones that do the selling directly.

Clearly on the TM site their are no exchanges if "better" seats become available.  Also certain seat locations become available if for whatever reason a credit card or other form of payment doesn't clear, i.e. they return into the system.  http://www.ticketmaster.com/h/faq.html?tm_link=help_nav_2_faqs