[NWOntario]

Just pulled a wicked single for Toronto 2 (118, row 11). Amex. There's one more kicking around in 122, if you're quick...

[VioletLite]

Shut out both days on Kingston. Argh. All I want are 2, anywhere in the building!

Join the Facebook page 'The Tragically Hip Fan Forum'. The admin started a thread there for buy/sell/trade tickets and made it clear there is to be NO inflating of prices and must be face or lower.

Really good admin too keeping an eye on stuff.

You may get your Kingston ticket there; worth a try.

[carebread]

Ahh, my friend backed out of taking my other premium ticket for Kingston. :o

[direwolf74]

CBC News has been all over this presale fiasco. They did a story about it on the National last night, and just now they spent about 10 minutes talking to various experts about what could possibly be done to avoid this kind of thing going forward. It's amazing how corrupt and shady the ticketing system has become.

[thedarkcanuck]

I was on TM going for Edmonton show 2 tickets from 10am until 10:30am on my phone + a laptop. I gave up after refreshing at least 75 times, choosing 150 mountains, 74 trees and 68 items of food but kept getting no tickets available. Now there are all kinds available? What a waste of a half hour today, will try for better tickets on friday

[Zod]

It is crooked, but what people don't seem to understand about Stubhub is that it's basically individual people selling tickets. Anyone can make an account and flip tickets on it. Everyone from profession brokers to your average joe is trying to get in on it. It's a huge arbitrage opportunity. Bands sell tickets for less than what people are willing to pay for them. I understand the nobility in keeping tickets affordable for your fans and letting your fans access the best tickets, but you need to control the tickets to prevent the arbitrage opportunities. The paperless tickets thing is pretty genius. Other than cancelling or having your CC card stolen before a show, I can't think of many negative aspects of it.

[boot]

I can think of a few negative aspects... I've had a few people offer to buy (or try to) buy) tickets for me, until I pointed out that might have to attend with me as well... they might love me, but that doesn't mean they love the Hip, or want to spend the price of a ticket or the trip to the venue.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not sure there's a better solution out there (other than "crack down on scalpers"), but there are some negative aspects.

[NWOntario]

There's also an element of perseverance to ticket buying that a lot of people don't seem to appreciate. Tickets sell out instantly all the time. But during that first hour tickets also become available all the time. People let tickets go. People forget they even had tickets in their cart and orders time out. Credit cards get declined. All sorts of things going. I've got tickets to four of the five shows I'm planning on attending this tour. Not a single one was acquired right when tickets went on sale. Calgary 1 took five minutes (presale). I got a single for Toronto 2 at 1 this afternoon (Amex). I got a pair for Toronto 3 (fan club) at 11:10 this morning. And for Kingston I got a single at 10:25 when all hope had long since been lost. I'm not bragging: I'm just illustrating the value in hanging around after tickets "sell out." (I realize I'm preaching to the choir here!)

[thebends]

I guess I just cant bring myself to think the hip would want and approve tickets to be sold at those prices.
I can see it as a way of thawarting scalpers of those tickets though.
Im still confused why they dont just advertise those in the price listing.

You can think whatever you want but the bands and the management are in on it. Ticketmaster doesn't necessarily release the best seats first upon an on sale, then people panic (like today, without even trying the general on sale), and they pay crazy prices when Platinum seats pop up because they are emotional and think it's a "score" they got these tickets.

I agree with pretty much everything you are saying, however, there are individual situations outside the "because they are emotional and think it's a "score" they got these tickets." realm. No need to provide details but this option worked very well for us.

[chancellor]

Luckily I got my tickets when I did for Toronto #3 as it looks like work has now blocked me from ticketmaster. Looks like a vacation day on Friday if it isn't unblocked by Friday.

[RenewedRoots]

There's also an element of perseverance to ticket buying that a lot of people don't seem to appreciate. Tickets sell out instantly all the time. But during that first hour tickets also become available all the time. People let tickets go. People forget they even had tickets in their cart and orders time out. Credit cards get declined. All sorts of things going. I've got tickets to four of the five shows I'm planning on attending this tour. Not a single one was acquired right when tickets went on sale. Calgary 1 took five minutes (presale). I got a single for Toronto 2 at 1 this afternoon (Amex). I got a pair for Toronto 3 (fan club) at 11:10 this morning. And for Kingston I got a single at 10:25 when all hope had long since been lost. I'm not bragging: I'm just illustrating the value in hanging around after tickets "sell out." (I realize I'm preaching to the choir here!)

This... exactly this! I got my tickets yesterday for the Toronto show on the 12th at around 10:10 - 10:15 after refreshing and playing the bot game entirely too many times. After the other shows were announced I decided to try for 2 more tickets today and got those around 10:40. I posted in this thread at 11:05 that a bunch of tickets had just become available (some of which were better then the decent ones I had managed a half hour earlier). The best advice I've seen and repeated myself several times is not to give up. Keep refreshing and playing the *cough* wonderful hock: bot game!

[guitar101]

There's also an element of perseverance to ticket buying that a lot of people don't seem to appreciate. Tickets sell out instantly all the time. But during that first hour tickets also become available all the time. People let tickets go. People forget they even had tickets in their cart and orders time out. Credit cards get declined. All sorts of things going. I've got tickets to four of the five shows I'm planning on attending this tour. Not a single one was acquired right when tickets went on sale. Calgary 1 took five minutes (presale). I got a single for Toronto 2 at 1 this afternoon (Amex). I got a pair for Toronto 3 (fan club) at 11:10 this morning. And for Kingston I got a single at 10:25 when all hope had long since been lost. I'm not bragging: I'm just illustrating the value in hanging around after tickets "sell out." (I realize I'm preaching to the choir here!)

This... exactly this! I got my tickets yesterday for the Toronto show on the 12th at around 10:10 - 10:15 after refreshing and playing the bot game entirely too many times. After the other shows were announced I decided to try for 2 more tickets today and got those around 10:40. I posted in this thread at 11:05 that a bunch of tickets had just become available (some of which were better then the decent ones I had managed a half hour earlier). The best advice I've seen and repeated myself several times is not to give up. Keep refreshing and playing the *cough* wonderful hock: bot game!

this is exactly my experience as well. I thought I wouldnt be able to score kingston tickets at all because of such insane demand for a tiny arena and now i have a group of 7 people going together all of whom scored tickets. We're not all sitting together, but we all get to see this show. Everyone scored tickets at anywhere from 3 minutes after onsale up to 25 minutes after onsale time. It also helps to have the attitude that you'll sit literally anywhere in the building. Good luck everyone. Dont give up just yet.

[NWOntario]

There's also an element of perseverance to ticket buying that a lot of people don't seem to appreciate. Tickets sell out instantly all the time. But during that first hour tickets also become available all the time. People let tickets go. People forget they even had tickets in their cart and orders time out. Credit cards get declined. All sorts of things going. I've got tickets to four of the five shows I'm planning on attending this tour. Not a single one was acquired right when tickets went on sale. Calgary 1 took five minutes (presale). I got a single for Toronto 2 at 1 this afternoon (Amex). I got a pair for Toronto 3 (fan club) at 11:10 this morning. And for Kingston I got a single at 10:25 when all hope had long since been lost. I'm not bragging: I'm just illustrating the value in hanging around after tickets "sell out." (I realize I'm preaching to the choir here!)

This... exactly this! I got my tickets yesterday for the Toronto show on the 12th at around 10:10 - 10:15 after refreshing and playing the bot game entirely too many times. After the other shows were announced I decided to try for 2 more tickets today and got those around 10:40. I posted in this thread at 11:05 that a bunch of tickets had just become available (some of which were better then the decent ones I had managed a half hour earlier). The best advice I've seen and repeated myself several times is not to give up. Keep refreshing and playing the *cough* wonderful hock: bot game!

this is exactly my experience as well. I thought I wouldnt be able to score kingston tickets at all because of such insane demand for a tiny arena and now i have a group of 7 people going together all of whom scored tickets. We're not all sitting together, but we all get to see this show. Everyone scored tickets at anywhere from 3 minutes after onsale up to 25 minutes after onsale time. It also helps to have the attitude that you'll sit literally anywhere in the building. Good luck everyone. Dont give up just yet.

I got a tenth row floor to Kingston at 10:25. There was no rhyme or reason for it; I just got really, really lucky.

Ultimately, there's never going to be a fully fair way of distributing tickets to any concert, let alone a tour like this. The band's Facebook's thread's full of "real" fans complaining they didn't get tickets...but this thread's full of equally "real" fans sharing the good news that they got lucky. Who's to say who "deserves" these tickets? And while Ticketmaster has its issues (and that's before getting into the whole "they're quite clearly in collusion with secondary sellers" piece) as an online distribution system it's a heck of a lot better than pretty much anything else. Yeah, some people didn't get tickets because scalpers got them--but I'd wager a lot more didn't get them because other real people--fans, even--did.

By the way, I've basically done nothing except think about stuff like this the last few days. cratch:

[sherpa]

Did they announce an opening band?

[carebread]

Did they announce an opening band?

I don't want no damn opening band!