Tickifying Tickets

I am what some would consider a Concert Queen.  I love to dress up and go to concerts.  And I have seen some pretty amazing shows.  Kelly Clarkson’s All I Ever Wanted Tour in which the concert was on Halloween night was amazing!  Ms. Taylor Swift blew me away on her Red tour (I even got to meet her mom!).

 

However, there is one aspect about concerts that I absolutely hate:  purchasing the tickets.  I have never had a problem going through the famous Ticketmaster.com website.  With the account that I created, I can easily log in, select my tickets and get on with my life.  But, many artists are getting away from using this site.

 

I enjoy listening to a lot of Christian artists such as Royal Tailor, tobymac and Britt Nicole (to name a few).  I was super excited that Ms. Nicole was coming to a church in my area.  I couldn’t wait to purchase tickets.  I kept trying to go to the website that was listed on the concert announcement, however, I was always kicked back to the godaddy.com website.  The error read that that particular website was up for sale.  When I did a little more digging, the church where the concert was being held had launched its own website, which is where the tickets were being sold.  Needless to say, I was not able to get tickets for the show by the time I FINALLY located the correct website.

 

A similar situation just occurred on Friday.  I subscribe to the tobymac online newsletter.  I was totally excited to see that Toby is bringing his Hits Deep Tour to Missouri.  He has a whole new artist line-up featuring another favorite artist of mine, Mandisa!  Since I receive the newsletter, I was given a special code to use that would allow me to purchase tickets on Thursday before the general public.  I eagerly headed to the website to order my tickets.  Every time I tried to purchase the tickets, however, I received a message that I needed to “purchase at least 12 tickets.”  Really?  I only needed 2.  Why would I have to purchase 12?  So, I continued to try throughout the day and was met with the same error message.

 

I noticed that the venue’s website had a Contact Us section.  I alerted them to the issue and waited expectantly for a response.  None came.  On Friday morning, I went to the website to try again.  The exact same message popped up.  Later in the evening, I figured I would make one last attempt.  I was able to get to the screen where you purchase the tickets, however, the only seats that were left were less than desirable.  Needless to say, I will not be attending the show.

 

When I opened my e-mail this morning, I found a message from the venue stating that the issue had been fixed.  Thanks to the venue’s incompetence, I will not be able to attend the show.  What good is a pre-sale code if the website in which you use the code is not properly functioning?  And the truly troubling part?  This seems to be a growing trend for Christian concerts.  My question:  Why?  How come I can purchase tickets to more “mainstream” artists with no problem at all?  The Christian artists are just as talented.  So, why are they not given the same respect from the venues that handle their ticket sales?

 

I hope that in the future, ALL concert tickets should be easily attainable.  Maybe Christian artists need to consider moving their sales to a more reputable site, such as ticketmaster.com.  No fan wants to be left out in the cold when they have saved their money to attend the show.