leonardcohenforum.com

This might appear like me being incredibly naive or just a whinge but after years of waiting for Leonard to tour again (I have been to all of his tours since the early seventies) I am very angry at being forced to buy tickets a considerable distance from the stage because ticket touts have bought up the best seats. Some of those seats I now learn are being offered at ten times the face value. I posted the following message on the Ticketmaster comments and questions board in London.
I attempted to buy tickets for this concert at the full face value at the best possible price and was told that no tickets were available at that price but that tickets might be available via ticketmasterexchange as indeed they were at three and four times the face value.
I was on the site at 9-00am (or as soon after that as I was able to be given the obvious traffic accessing the site) so those people attempting to resell their tickets were obviously not people who had suddenly discovered that due to unforseen circumstances they would not be able to attend the concert and would therefore have to resell their them. They are touts. Your site declares itself to be attempting to stop touts. I suggest that by making this service available you are actually encouraging the activities of touts and further, that by charging a commission fee on such sales you are even profiting from their activities. The O2 sells its tickets via your service. So as far as I am aware there is no other way of picking up tickets for O2 concerts quickly i.e as soon as tickets become available. This means that both you as a ticket agency and the O2 as a venue could be descibed as being complicit in encouraging the activities of ticket touts. I intend to pursue this complaint with the Leonard Cohen management and indeed with my MP. As a long standing Leonard Cohen fan who has eagerly anticipated this tour I am bitterly disappointed that I have been relegated to seats a considerable distance away from where I would have liked to have been because of the activities of people whose only concern is to make money from people like me. I was happy to pay whatever it took to be at this concert but I am not prepared to line the pockets of the greedy and I am disgusted that the O2 and Ticketmaster allow this outrageous practice to flourish. I look forward to you response.

I completely agree with you, David. I'll be interested to hear their response to you and whether it's merely a stock one, that does NOT address the ethical issues of this. I am so sorry to hear that you've been victimized by touters. No doubt, countless other devoted fans, as well. It's truly sickening.


~ Lizzy

I'm told that the Leonard Cohen page with tour details was the second busiest IN THE WORLD yesterday. I got offered two back gallery seats in Manchester five minutes after opening, stupidly rejected them and pressed the button for "try again" for the next day's show, hoping for better, and 50 minutes later retrying all the time, had nothing at all. In the meantime I picked up two mediocre / poor side seats for the huge O2 venue in London … and all the best seats were already gone. I reckon he sold out three nights in Manchester in five minutes. Of course, no doubt the Sunday papers will be full of "hotel, dinner and concert" packages at £300.



The point about Len's pension fund, is that £75 a ticket must be too cheap, because an awful lot of scalpers will be making lots of money. That's the reason why The Eagles notorious $250 a ticket in the USA, for which they've been castigated, is reasonable. Either they get it, or scalpers do (TicketMaster, with tickets held back for hospitality and hotel packages being the biggest one). As few people go in parties of six, the six ticket allocation is a problem.


The latest issue of "The Word” (today) has a major feature on the market in reselling tickets, giving examples of Springsteen tickets with a £40 price going for £250 minutes later. This afternoon, £75 Leonard Cohen tickets ranged from £185 to £295. I guess if you have a family of four with four computers pressing "refresh" from a few minutes before a box office opens you have a good chance of getting two or three lots of six tickets. And "robot" programs were accounting for 80% of purchases from TicketMaster in the US until they introduced the "type in the word in the squiggly box" check against robot buying.



The downside was mentioned … some artists don't mind, because they get rid of 50,000 seats quickly. It's then up to the touts to fill them, and it mentioned something else I've seen this year … sold out venues with empty seats dotted all around.



It pointed out that if they check bags for food, drink, explosives, recorders, they could just as easily check an ID against the name on the ticket and kill the secondary market.

David - what can I say I agree with every word you said.

Bandstand - sorry had to ask these niggly questions keep me awake at night. Who was the most busiest?

Hello all,
What is happening with ticketmaster and ebay is that they are on a mission to control the entire ticket market (primary and secondary) so they basically can stick it to the fans big time. Ebay has bought up Stubhub which is America's largest secondary ticket exchange site and Ticketmaster have bought up Viagogo and Getmein. The Ticketexchange thing they do now is simply a way of introducing a tiered pricing structure. At first they try and justify it by allowing "fans" to sell on it and soon they will start selling the best seats themselves for premium prices. They are simply trying to make as much money as they can and who can blame them. They are a business after all. I would say the real threat to the fans is not touts but is Ticketmaster and Ebay. Touts can only operate with their approval and approve they do.

Paula wrote:David - what can I say I agree with every word you said.

Bandstand - sorry had to ask these niggly questions keep me awake at night. Who was the most busiest?

according to http://www.internettrafficdailysitewhic ... llthem.com the most visited for the last week have been

Monday 10th Paris Hilton
Tuesday 11th Britney Spears
Wednesday 12th Paris Hilton and Britney Spears
Thursday 13th Barak Obama
Friday 16th Barak Obama and Britney Spears

BK A1 E 7 - 8 £270.03 Buy Tickets
BK A1 E 1 - 4 £275.00 Buy Tickets
BK A1 E 5 - 6 £279.97 Buy Tickets
BK A3 E 47 - 48 £285.03 Buy Tickets
BK A1 D 3 - 4 £294.97 Buy Tickets
BK A3 E 43 - 46 £294.97 Buy Tickets
BK A1 D 7 - 8 £300.03 Buy Tickets
BK A1 D 5 - 6 £305.00 Buy Tickets
BK A1 D 1 - 2 £315.03 Buy Tickets
BK A3 A 45 - 46 £575.00 Buy Tickets
BK A1 A 1 - 2 £600.03 Buy Tickets
BK A2 B 30 - 31 £600.03 Buy Tickets
BK A2 B 28 - 29 £650.00 Buy Tickets
I've just copied and pasted this from the ticketmaster ticket exchange for the 02 arena concert. The prices are per ticket!!
These are the tickets now for sale from people who bought them this morning and now realise that they don't really want to come anyway!!!!!!! All these tickets are at the very front!!!

How do these touts manage to get these premium tickets????
Something is very wrong.

Pete

p.s I did manage to get my tickets but this is very frustrating..especially for those still searching.

so many people so few tickets......................

money talks........ maybe writing a nice letter to cohen's management saying why you'd like some tickets, would be a good way of allocating tickets instead of first in with a pile of cash. then again who'd have time for that and it's like judging art. a nice letter is something touts couldn't pull off...... i'll think i'll shut up as it was a silly idea.

HI David, and Bandstand, my heart really goes out to you guys... To some people money is their god but the funny thing is that they are so feckin' busy trying to make the damn stuff that they actually never really enjoy it.
I had that experience this morning at 9.01am when the seats they offered me were 40 rows back in the block facing the stage... i felt i was playing Deal or no Deal... to reject them and try again or not? But when I saw the scanning thing taking what seemed like forever just to let me in.... i decided these were the seats I was meant to have.
Anyways, I hope you do get to the events and have a great time anyways.

If the UK fans had been given the opportunity to buy tickets prior to going on sale to the general public there might have been a lot more satisfied fans and this is a real shame.
In January I bought a ticket for Katie Melua at Bournemouth International Centre.
Her management set up a special pre-sale link for fans who were on her mailing list to enable them to purchase tickets 2 days in advance of the tickets going on sale to the general public. An email was sent to fans, unlike here for the Canadian shows where the password was public.
I got a row B ticket thanks to this it's just a pity that Leonard's management didn't deem fit to set up something similar for his UK fans.

Having said this I was able to buy a reasonable ticket for the 02 and a side stall ticket for Manchester via Ticketmaster online but I think something should be done about the touts both on eBay and Ticketmaster Ticket exchange.

Jesus!
Did anyone read my post where i expain what is happening with Ticketmaster Ticketexchange?
You can bang on about touts all you like but it is like blaming a drug addict when you should be blaming the dealer. i.e. Ticketmaster!

AND,
Leonard has nothing to do with this ticket thing. It's is to do with the promoters and Ticketmaster who are not averse to making enough money for another Porsche each so writing letters to Leonard's managers will end up in the round file (the bin). You need to realise a simple fact. Money talks and bullshit walks and that's a fact of life sadly.
It ain't fair but life ain't either.

I've just (11.40pm) tested the 02 hospitality package and was offered 2 tickets in BK A1 Row V seats 5 & 6 (at £285.10 + service charge + postage), so as I've said in other threads the best seats have been allocated to these people rather than the true fans.

So awful to hear that you've all has such problems with your tickets.

I paid $250 Australian dollars to see Sting/Police perform outdoors. The $250 paid for a chair parked on grass (and I didn't get to use the chair). That was the legitimate issue price of the ticket. I would be happy to pay that to see Leonard Cohen. Come to Australia please Leonard!! And charge $250 for tickets. You deserve it.

I had the same experience had 2 x £75 tickets foe London but lost them while attempting to check the ( non existent) seating plan, Then got 2 x £60 tickets and had to be thankful for that. I hope all the touts rot in hell.