Ticketmaster Revelation
Date: November 9, 2006 06:17
One day a few years ago, I had a "revelation" about getting through on the phone to Ticketmaster. It was so simple and so effective... it got me a ticket on the 7th row to a Stones concert in Philly. This idea came to me in one of those "lightning bolt" moments in our lives.
Everything seems to be ready...
On a Saturday morning at around 9:45 am, I was getting ready for the tickets that were about to go on sale thru Ticketmaster for the Rolling Stones 2002 show in Philadelphia. Tickets were available both on the Internet and by phone. I was in a room with four computers, and I had each computer's browser windows ready at Ticketmaster's Rolling Stones purchase page.
At precisely 10:00 am, I began clicking "refresh" on all the windows. server busy... server busy... server busy... server busy... The windows on each computer read out the same message: "Server Busy." Then the windows began to read "server down." It was around 10:06, and I was beginning to panic.
I picked up a telephone and frantically dialed Ticketmaster's 212 number. Busy. The 718 number, the 516 number, the 914 numbers... all busy. Then I had the revelation. It was like I was struck by a bolt of lightning.
I quickly looked up the telephone number for Ticketmaster in South Carolina! This is brilliant, I thought... Surely Ticketmaster's agents in Carolina would be on the same system as New York or Philly, and it's in the same time zone... but I'd be "dialing around" all the congestion!
I quickly dialed the number, and I got through on the first try, scoring a seat on the seventh row! I was so amazed that this simple idea had worked so well, and that I hadn't thought of it in the previous thirty years of going to concerts.
In truth, I wouldn't even be telling you all this, if the ticket-selling system wasn't so different now... with Internet-only sales, presales, whatever. If telephone sales were still the thing, I'd still be keeping this to myself!