TicketMaster: Getting Concert Tickets the Hard Way

I am not an avid concert go-er. I don't own one band t-shirt, one autographed CD, or one brightly colored poster depicting a musical idol. Until my recent engagement to a music lover I had never bothered to go to a concert and certainly had not had the pleasure of ordering tickets online. However, I quickly learned that most major concerts tickets are sold through a mediating service called TicketMaster. TicketMaster, as I understand it, does the gruesome job of being the ticketing agent for most bands and record labels in the US.

My first experience with TicketMaster was horrible. I had originally gone to the band's website in search of tickets. I assumed, as any unwitting person would, that the band's website would sell tickets online or provide me with a number to call to order tickets. How foolish of me to think that musicians would want to keep as much profit as possible from their ticket sales! Instead the band's site (and many others I soon discovered) directed me to a service called TicketMaster.

TicketMaster.com is probably the most poorly executed customer ordering website on the internet today. Their search function is difficult to use and gives a great deal of non relevant results. It is hard to locate the tickets you need. Once you do locate them it is difficult to understand what seating is or is not available at what price. These two things could be overlooked if not for the annoyance of a timed response function that requires you to complete your order within a specific number of minutes. If you are a slow typist or need to dig in your purse to find your credit card forget it! You'll have to go through the ordering process more than once to get through it completely on time.