See tickets

[maninkilt]

So a few days on from T day now the dust has settled a bit what do people really think about the ticket sale this year?

My experience was not too bad, started about 8:30, entered details about 8:50 and got confirmation about 90mins later, the only problem was the page which said that our reg numbers had already been used which caused no small panic!

Heard some horror stories of people being on line for ten hours plus and not getting a ticket, of people being on the phone for hours (while being charged) and then cut off and of reg numbers being lost.

Some have said that with the number of people on the system at one time that no system could cope, others that as they had to deal with around 175000 tickets they should be able to cope and that systems like face book cope with far higher volumes.

I dont know myself but what do you think and what (realisticly) can or should be done to improve.

[random_man]

My actual experience was good - I woke up at 8:45 went online at 8:50 had tickets by 9:00am (by the time I had filled all the details in) and confirmation by 10:00am

I had freinds in another part of the country (manchester) that couldnt get on apparently all day and had another friend who's number didnt work - he even managed to get through on the phone and they said they had no trace of his number and had to re-register.

I also managed to get onto the page numerous times after getting my tickets to get tickets for others!

[derfman]

my experience wasnt too bad, ive learnt the past few years, the websit is better than the phone line, i got on the first page about 9am, but each page kept failing, slowly got through to the card details bit

then click to confirm never went through to another page, suddenly i was back at the name and postcode section, thought "f**k sake" put em in again, and lil red letter "the names have already been used" AAAAARGH! wat going on

everyone was saying "that means u got them" and im sure it happened to me last yr but my ass was clenched till i got that confirmation email 5 hours later (thank god im able to check my mail on my phone as i was at work)

[russycarps]

were tickets supposed to go on sale at 9am? why do so many people seem to have got them at 8.30am (and even earlier?)

[angelesque]

I had a good experience - the easiest ticket I'v ever booked? I started about 8:30, entered details about 8:50 and got confirmation at 9.01. Money debited from my account on Monday.

My only stress is that I need to get a ticket for my boyfriend who failed to register in time (he now has his reg number), but that is obviously not remotely See's fault! On this occasion See worked out well for me, though I've had a lot of problems with them for other things I've booked.

[theticket]

I was really pleased with it this year to be honest...

Was completely distracted by decorating my kitchen all weekend - suddenly remembered about 10:45am, took about 30mins getting through, pages crashed a lot during postcode/reg no, card details etc... but just kept going back and resubmitting. Each page took about 4/5 attempts but got through eventually. Got confirmation screen come up so was quite comfortable it had gone through ok - email conf took 24hrs but wasn't worried as had seen the conf screen.

To be honest count myself seriously lucky that it was such a smooth process! If only it was like that every year! got quite a few friends oh hold for the cancellations and next round of tickets - don't envy them for that - think it'll be savage!

So all in all - i've very happy with it and no complaints!

[maninkilt]

were tickets supposed to go on sale at 9am? why do so many people seem to have got them at 8.30am (and even earlier?)

[Celtic bhoy]

Woke up at 11am with a hangover.

Had breakfast

Watched the Rangers v Celtic game on the telly (shouldn;t have bothered)

Tried the website about 2pm.

Couldn't get on and checked E Fests to see it had been a 6 hour nightmare for loads of people

About 5pm I called the 0115 numbers I had from previous years and got through after about 10 mins, booked tickets and got a confirmation the following morning.

Possibly the easiest ticket day in many years of going.

The people at SEE were polite, friendly and helpful, no issues for me.

[MyTwistedWords]

My T-Day experience was utterly fantastic...

woke up 8.30am

Turned on computer, went to make tea... then located correct page - all by 8.45

sipped tea a lot and browsed on efests

8:50 decided to hit refresh whilst i went to locate my debit card - found it, came back to screen,

new page up asking me what i want,

entered my details, bought ticket by 8.58am!

got the confirmation page up and everything.... easy peasy!

by 10.45 i had my confirmation email sitting in my inbox and another cuppa tea, then accompanied by my book and a slice of toast... went back to bed!

i do have friends however that had lots of trouble with their registrations etc.

i will say this though: not one of them checked their reg numbers in the weeks leading up to T-day which i find incredible and they all now hugely regret. they are keeping everything crossed for the re-sales and i'm SoloRaving for my first glasto until i hear otherwise!

wooohooo

[Josie's Cat]

Got on about 10, like theticket said, every time a page crashed just went back and resubmitted, about 5 times each page, just back click back click, very cool I was. Very cool, like a cucumber slushie.

Confirmation page came up, was happy.

Saw on yahoo on the Monday "GLASTO SOLD OUT!!" and I thought, wow, if I had known how quickly they were selling I would not have been so cool! Looked in email, got confirmation.

Felt ridiculously smug and happy (first) and then sorry for people who missed out. Then back came the smugness. Sorry, I can't lie.

Oh yeah, also I rang up see on the 0115 number the week before to make sure reg was ok, as I couldn't get it to find me on the checker thing. Girl was helpful and took no more than 2 mins to be reassured.

Edited October 8, 2009 by Josie's Cat

[russycarps]

The quoted time was 9am, I and lots of other people got them before then.

[ukslim]

I had a fairly easy ride - went on at 9am, got to the order page, filled it in, hit submit, had to reload a few times before it told me one of the postcodes was wrong. Phoned my mate, got his other postcode, fixed it, had to reload a few more times, but the whole thing was sorted by 9:09. Pretty smart.

However:

I believe that we should be able expect a system where you're not presented with blank screens and server error pages. You should never have to hit reload to retry a form submission. If you go to the web site or the phone line before tickets sell out, you should get a smooth fast transaction just as if you were buying anything else. And then when the tickets are sold out, you should get an immediate and categorical statement that says so.

OK, I might accept a bit of to-and-fro when the last couple of hundred tickets are left.

I work in e-commerce, and I completely believe this can be done.

• Other services routinely deal with a much higher volume of users (Google, Amazon, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube)

• Glastonbury is by no means unique in its size of the desirability of tickets (Olympics, World Cup, Michael Jackson etc.) - so anything they developed could be reused

• Assigning tickets lends itself very well to parallelisation (that is, you can spread the task across lots of servers)

• Nowadays with cloud services, you can scale from a few servers to thousands, and back down again, very easily. Glastonbury bookings should only need dozens.

My guess is that See doesn't perceive itself to have any competition in this area, so it sees no reason to improve. After all, the only other choice we have as consumers is to not go to Glastonbury.

[eFestivals]

I got mine with no problems, but if I had gone online at 9am, then failed to get a ticket, then heard loads of people got their before 9am I'd be absolutely furious. I think this is something that needs to be addressed to be honest.

(not having a go at your or anyone else for getting their before 9am of course!)

the before 9 thing was a matter of just a couple of minutes. It's hardly an outrageous thing, and very many things don't stick to advertised times to the second.

[jontosh]

online at 8.45am. Tickets booked at 8.57am apparently, although was getting the "reg numbers been used" message so wasn't sure. Confirmation email arrived at 9.20am

[djkf]

got up at like 12:30pm got a ticket by 12:45pm. Just the one. It was a big change from previous years having been through the hell of 2005 and 2007 going within hours (I got a lot of stick in 2008/9 for getting up too early and being a bit fanatical). Girlfriend said she would get one later in the week, same with friends. They sold out that day and I'm the only one in my group with a ticket. I'll be giving it back in February if no one else gets a ticket and let this be known: "if Depeche Mode, Prince, David Bowie or Rolling Stones etc play and I'm not there THERE WILL BE BLOOD".

I thought the SEE-TICKET experience was definitely better this year. You just had to completely ignore the Queuing system. It didn't work. Just repeat the whole process from the ID Number screen.

I was thinking about this last year. I wonder if an Official External Application would be the best way to go? Something that would reduce Website load and keep the queue flowing easily. You could even set up the Card details and Registration numbers the night before so could speed up the queue even faster.

[guyfawkes]

I had my ticket sorted by 8.59am, had a couple of screen crashes going through it and the payment page crashed when i submitted my details but when i went through again and saw my reference had been used to get a ticket i knew id be fine. It tends to happen alot with seeticket so i wasn't paniced by it.

[markmccue]

Got tickets scarily easy by 9.03am on the website. Called my brother to see how he got on but he was in taking a dump

So i took it upon myself to call his girlfriend for their reg numbers and booked them the tickets by 9.30am.

Job done. Never had it so easy in a ticket stampede tbh.

[Brock_Lesner]

My experience was great, I was sat on a beach in Cuba had a phone call from my sister about 9am (about 2pm UK time) to tell me she'd got my tickets for me. So i just continued to enjoy the sun and have mojito's and cigars even more! Good times.

[MrZigster]

Did SeeTickets actually lose anybodys registration number?

I don't mean "I thought I had ticked the box for three years", or, "I forgot to tick the box for three years" etc.

I mean you had done everything correctly & checked your reg number pre T-Day and then discovered See had "lost" them.

[russycarps]

the before 9 thing was a matter of just a couple of minutes. It's hardly an outrageous thing, and very many things don't stick to advertised times to the second.

[Gingerbond]

Got page up at 8.56 all booked by 9.01. Like lots of other people had several page crashes but all in all a good experience.

[Misspelt Yoof]

Did SeeTickets actually lose anybodys registration number?

I don't mean "I thought I had ticked the box for three years", or, "I forgot to tick the box for three years" etc.

I mean you had done everything correctly & checked your reg number pre T-Day and then discovered See had "lost" them.

[fullfathom5]

Tried website about 20 past 9, took me 10 mins or so of refreshing, booked by 9:33am.

[DreadlockDan]

I woke up around 9am with a hangover and had completely forgot about the tickets going on sale.

Couldn't get back to sleep so got some brekkie and switched on my pc to check the news etc and saw they were on sale. Had to wake the girlfriend to get her registration number which is never an easy task on a sunday morning and logged onto the site. I got "page not found errors" and "no node available errors" a couple of times whenever submitting various parts of the forms but other than that it was pretty easy. None of my friends who actually tried to get tickets had problems that I'm aware.

All in all it seemed much easier than previous times I've bought tickets although I didnt try for 2009 and the one before that I ended up getting a ticket a weeks before the festival when it was sold out due a friend that happened to work for some company or other that was doing stuff at the festival.

As for the 9am thing, I'd be annoyed if they were sold at 8.30 and I'd missed out but the company I work for does similarly timed sales and its not very easy to get everything start at exactly the right time.

[eFestivals]

I was thinking about this last year. I wonder if an Official External Application would be the best way to go? Something that would reduce Website load and keep the queue flowing easily. You could even set up the Card details and Registration numbers the night before so could speed up the queue even faster.

That would be a daft idea, with all of the same problems.

Everyone would want to try to be one of the first entering their details, because if they weren't then they'd be at the end of the queue and so be the ones to not get tickets.