Give seetickets a break

[mrtourette]

I don't agree. Of all the gigs and festivals I've seen, a lot of them of equal/more demand, See are the only crowd who continually fuck up at the payment page. Every single year.

[Englishdragon]

I don't agree. Of all the gigs and festivals I've seen, a lot of them of equal/more demand, See are the only crowd who continually fuck up at the payment page. Every single year.

Out of 9 attempts since 2004, I've only ever seen the payment page once. Probably a few thousand page refreshes. Thats demand. Fine. A million registered this year so only 14% ish are going to get tickets. Fine. I accept that.

But actually getting to the payment page and See not being capable of taking payment - 10 times in a row - is unacceptable. Never seen that from anyone other than Seetickets.

Sees server(s) crashed for 30 minutes! Even though, unlike most other festies/gigs/events they had the luxury of knowing exactly how many were registered before hand! Thats exceptionally poor planning.

Its also irresponsible. Every year people are posting "have they taken my money yet", "have I been charged twice" and the like.

[mrtourette]

But how many ticket sites have exclusive ticket sales, even festivals with capacity close to Glastonbury is spread over tens of ticket sellers websites. Glastonbury is the only one I can think of where all of the 120,000 are sold exclusively from one website.

Edited October 7, 2013 by mrtourette

[The Nal]

That's not what I meant, I was disgareeing with your 'or the best festival in the world it's unacceptable'. It's unacceptable for any event, no ticket vendor will try harder based on how good or worthy an event is perceived to be.

Edited October 7, 2013 by The Nal

[Englishdragon]

Ah ok! Yeah true that.

The UK is a bit unique in that way with ticket sales. Ireland isn't like that. Same for a lot of European countries Ive bought tickets in. Even big gigs like Slane only have tickets via Ticketmaster and have the same demand issue of course but they don't chuck you out willy-nilly on the payment page.

If they limit the amount of transactions then they shouldn't let people near the payment page until its safe to do so.

Regarding the other multiple devices, so what? They should have planned for that. They should have the capacity for 2-3 times more traffic than there actually is. Thats basic IT planning.

[Ed209]

Ah ok! Yeah true that.

The UK is a bit unique in that way with ticket sales. Ireland isn't like that. Same for a lot of European countries Ive bought tickets in. Even big gigs like Slane only have tickets via Ticketmaster and have the same demand issue of course but they don't chuck you out willy-nilly on the payment page.

If they limit the amount of transactions then they shouldn't let people near the payment page until its safe to do so.

Regarding the other multiple devices, so what? They should have planned for that. They should have the capacity for 2-3 times more traffic than there actually is. Thats basic IT planning.

Edited October 7, 2013 by Ed209

[mrtourette]

To be fair to Neil he did upgrade prior to the R&L announcment in 2012 but the site still suffered, I agree that anyone who needs to bitch about an announcement/see tickets can wait an hour or so.

With regards to See, I don't think it affects their brand too much. What are people going to do, go and get their Glastonbury tickets elsewhere? It may lead people to use other vendors for other events but when your only main competitor is Ticketmaster who have their own unique line in damaging their own brand See are pretty comfortable. It's good to try the smaller vendors but See do well in clawing back their credibility with the range of events they cover and how easy to use their system is. I don't think it will do them too much damage as not enough people will understand what (if anything) they're doing wrong and just put it down to high demand/bad luck.

[keeno]

Also seetickets are willing to cater to glastonbury's demands to retain their business. The large ticketing agencies being mentioned on this thread i.e. Ticketmaster would not pamper to the whole registering a photo thing or organising coach packages like seecoaches do. The larger agencies have their own membership procedures and their own larger commercial goals to look after, it would be a great deal of effort to cater to one festivals needs, which in the grand scheme of things isn't that large for the likes of ticketmaster who process transactions for world tours that gross hundreds of millions without half of the procedures of gaining a glasto ticket. Seetickets scratch glasto's back, and vice versa.

[Ed209]

Nah I don't think it will do them too much damage. Where it will hurt them is if events or event organisers don't give them a contract because of their screw ups with glasto. Or if glasto stop giving them the job.

[The Nal]

Neil made a decent point on one of the other threads that see don't need the server capacity for any other time of the year. To pay the huge amount extra just for those couple of hours once a year isn't viable without a significant hike in booking fees.

The fault is probably with glasto for giving the contact to see.

[jimmillen]

Well, for all the perhaps-faults in their web setup, See have just responded to a query I sent them via their website within 5 minutes - pretty impressive.

Edited October 7, 2013 by jimmillen

[dingbat2]

Well, for all the perhaps-faults in their web setup, See have just responded to a query I sent them via their website within 5 minutes - pretty impressive.

[LowerMead]

Why would Glasto stop giving them the job though? They've shifted all the tickets in record time. For all their 'sorry to the disappointed' platitudes, the Eavis's don't really give a toss that some people didn't get tickets, as long as they sell out, and Seetickets have helped them do that. Job done in their eyes.

In 2008 I bought a ticket on a Tuesday night about a month beforehand. they were on the verge of going bust that year. Since then there has been a huge hype over tickets every year, and the scramble to get them has almost become self-perpetuating.

I have a great dislike for Seetickets (see my other post on the 'backlash' thread), not at all helped by that Tweet they made yesterday - exceedingly arrogant. However, from a promoter's point of view, they have done a great job.

Sadly, I don't see that changing any time soon unless somebody comes in to offer a better, cheaper package including all the photo ID management which is instrumental in Glastonbury Festival getting the licence every year. Are Ticketmaster going to do that? I don't think so.

[jimmillen]

Was your query "why is your response time to queries so shit?"

[PidgeJones]

They still sold the full allocation of tickets so don't know why everyone is having such a go, there were more people wanting tickets than available so people were always going to be disappointed. They sold the tickets in record time.

[Jon who was I]

I have to say, I'm surprised that things haven't improved significantly in recent years, with the emergence of cloud providers such as AWS and Azure being able to offer huge amounts of capacity for situations just like this. No need to have all the kit on standby, just light the servers up when needed and spin then down once sold out.

It seems like such a no brainer to me that I must be missing something. Is this already happening and if so, why are there still so many timeouts when entering details?

Anyone know more about the situation?

Edited October 7, 2013 by I am Jon

[MadCampingNut]

Looking at it from the point of view of a winner and a loser.

I still think its broken. People will always get tickets and people will always not thats life!!.

The situation of getting to the registration page and then it crashing and not being able to put your details in is just shit, pure and simple.

That itself shows its not up to scratch. As others have said no one will mind or do anything about it (SeeTicket & The Evaises) while the tickets are still being sold IN FULL, and theres no major press issues.

It just easier to copy and paste the usual "Sorry to all those that we're unsuccessfull in not getting tickets, we appreciate this may seem a dissapointment.......blah blah blah..."

[hallamboy]

OK...say for example that the system worked and at 9am it was a straight route to plopping in reg and payment details.

How exactly does the system work out who should go through? Would it mean that we'd all have to join the virtual queue 24 hours before hand? If 500,000 computers go to the site at 8:50, before the sale starts, how does it work out who should get a ticket?

Even if everything worked it would still be a lottery and people would be disappointed. If it wouldn't be back door URLs, IP addresses etc etc etc, then it would be something else that would make it unfair. I'm not sticking up for See Tickets, but it isn't an easy subject to find a solution to.

Edited October 7, 2013 by hallamboy

[amfy]

The thing is, I've had pages crash when I'm trying to make a ebay payment in complete isolation. It's just an internet thing. You are never going to completely get rid of that. It can happen at any time, let alone when 3000 transactions a minute are flying through the servers.

I totally get how gutting it is though. It is exactly what happened to me for Glastonbury 2005. The most annoying part was having to stop trying in case the money went out twice (it was before photo registration times).

Over time, you move on and just put it in the "didn't get tickets" box. It's not really any different to not getting a page at all. You got a page that didn't work. The bottom line, is no Glastonbury ticket, no matter how it happens. No - come to think of it theres a line below that that say we can't all go.

I'm honestly not trying to make light of people's concerns & unhappiness, I know I was totally on the floor gutted when it happened to me. At some point, you get tickets again, and you'll actually have an even better time because you'll know how it feels when its taken off you.

[The Nal]

The thing is, I've had pages crash when I'm trying to make a ebay payment in complete isolation. It's just an internet thing. You are never going to completely get rid of that. It can happen at any time, let alone when 3000 transactions a minute are flying through the servers.

I totally get how gutting it is though. It is exactly what happened to me for Glastonbury 2005. The most annoying part was having to stop trying in case the money went out twice (it was before photo registration times).

[MadCampingNut]

As I see it the problems are not process based they are system based. What I mean is the queue system is fine. The fact that people get to the registration page and it crashes, the fact that every year theres always an issue with something is just unacceptable.

[Jie Bie]

That is bad, for me it crashed twice at the 'confirm registration number' page and then crashed 3 times on the payment page, when it did finally go through it was after about 3-4mins of waiting!

Edited October 7, 2013 by Jie Bie

[scarletmist]

Its really annoying when it crashes midway through the process - I got dumped out on several occasions on Thursday and Sunday before finally making it through.

But I'm hard pressed to say that it really makes any difference - because if the system worked faultlessly then we'd just end up staying on the holding page for a bit longer. And I definitely wouldn't want to see a message at 9.01 telling me that I was number 180,000 in the queue either.

I think we should judge the merit of Seetickets by their performance over the whole ticket-buying process, not just over this hour of chaos.

[storm]

my only issue is glitches like getting right through to the page before the payment stage and then when you click proceed you end up back on the holding page even when I tried the back button, every page was redirected to the holding stage, From what I've read it was like they thought I had bought them having been through the whole process and were ensuring I started again (proper order too) but I hadn't got to the payment page.

I was lucky enough to get in as soon as we could, went straight through and then ended up back at the holding page pressing f5 for an hour to no avail.

That bugs me but (possibly as I already have mine from Thursday's sale), I don't blame see just the demand meaning the system didn't work properly for me.

Edited October 7, 2013 by storm