2019 TICKET CHAT

[Keithy]

7 minutes ago, badsandwich said:

agreed. and it's not necessarily a competition of "who has the best internet/tech" as we've seen people get through to the ticket page successfully on a crappy old tablet or phone while macbooks didn't even get to the holding page. it's gutting to try and fail to get tickets but, barring the issues with people getting kicked off the ticket/payment pages, this is still one of the fairest systems for getting tickets for a major event.

Indeed. I got my 2014 ticket in the resale, leaning out of my mates upstairs window with a 2 bar signal. It is overwhelmingly just luck.

[SteveTLizard]

And here we are, The Monday after the T-Day, the five stages of Glastonbury grief. 

1. Denial.  "well that can't be right, it says sold out and I haven't got a ticket, I'll just keep refreshing until I do" *stops pressing F5 at around 2pm Sunday afternoon*

2. Anger.  "See tickets and GFL are all a bunch of useless bastards, the current ticket buying system is totally unfair and skewed towards <insert relevant group I'm not in>.  The ticketing system needs a total revamp so I can get a ticket (see previous posts above) ... it's so f'ing unfair AAAARRGRRGGGGH!!!"

3. Bargaining.  "I seem to remember uncle Frank lives in Somerset and sort of knows Michael Eavis, I'll give him a call, he should be able to get me in on the guest list .......... What do you mean "Michael who?" ffs"  * desparately googles Oxfam Stewarding "

4. Depression.  "Fuck it, I just can't cope without Glastonbury in my life, where's the vodka"

5. Acceptance.  "Ok ok ok, I've heard Boomtown's as good if not better than Glastonbury anyway, I'm doing that"

 

And no, I didn't get a sniff at ticket, but yes I can't see a fairer way of selling them.

 

 

[Keithy]

4 minutes ago, ghoulieanne said:

I don't think it's fair that the same person can get through loads of times, when others don't even get a sniff at the booking page.   Maybe once you've got your 6 tickets, that IP address shouldn't be allowed back in again for that year.

Not that I'm bitter or anything x

I don't think there's any evidence of the same person getting through loads of times at all. In the past there was suggestions that clicking 'back' after a booking would let you book again but that definitely is not the case now.

IP blacklisting would cause more problems than it solves and for tech savvy people, easily worked around. 

[Keithy]

6 minutes ago, Titters said:

My two cents - 

A single entry ballot system would be the fairest approach - everyone would have the same chance of getting a ticket, slightly increased if it allows for groups to be in the lottery.

However, 

This would need significant management to make sure it wasn't exploited - for a start, photos on all tickets would need to be checked against all tickets to avoid duplicate entries attached to different addresses in different names. Anyone want that job?  

And, as @Charm says - a ballot means there is no way to increase your chance of going - which would mean fewer eFesters going, and more folks at the festival who have entered the ballot on the off-chance. 

 

I can appreciate why many will argue this is the way it should be done - it is fairer to an entire population. 

The current approach allows you to "buy more lottery tickets" through preparation and clubbing together with mates. It seems like the system is now very difficult to exploit bar having more tries at getting through. Still no guarantee of getting a ticket, but you have a better chance than someone who forgot to check when the sale was (unlike in a lottery system).  

It's also difficult to exploit - multiple registrations don't really increase your chances of getting a ticket. 

 

I like the fact I have a slightly better chance of getting a ticket by being organised.  I also accept the fact that just being organised doesn't in any way guarantee a ticket. I don't deserve a ticket any more than Sam in the office - but I know I will get more squeezed out of those 5 days and give more back to the festival, than Sam would - the person who stated they would have left Adele to get back for cricket, and would enter a ballot but completely missed yesterday's sale. Is there another approach that is fairer and allows for more people to try for tickets at the same time, without asking them to spend a lot of money or give up a lot of time?? 

 

And whilst it would be ideal to change the current system so you never lose the holding page (like me), or lose the page after entering details (like me) - it wouldn't actually change the success rate from all those that were trying yesterday morning.  

 

 

Plus a ballot would not require a Titters Spreadsheet and all of Camp Ralph will attest that would be a sad loss to mankind.

[Titters]

@Keithy I wouldn't know what to do with all the spare hours. 

[mufcok]

7 minutes ago, SteveTLizard said:

And here we are, The Monday after the T-Day, the five stages of Glastonbury grief. 

1. Denial.  "well that can't be right, it says sold out and I haven't got a ticket, I'll just keep refreshing until I do" *stops pressing F5 at around 2pm Sunday afternoon*

2. Anger.  "See tickets and GFL are all a bunch of useless bastards, the current ticket buying system is totally unfair and skewed towards <insert relevant group I'm not in>.  The ticketing system needs a total revamp so I can get a ticket (see previous posts above) ... it's so f'ing unfair AAAARRGRRGGGGH!!!"

3. Bargaining.  "I seem to remember uncle Frank lives in Somerset and sort of knows Michael Eavis, I'll give him a call, he should be able to get me in on the guest list .......... What do you mean "Michael who?" ffs"  * desparately googles Oxfam Stewarding "

4. Depression.  "Fuck it, I just can't cope without Glastonbury in my life, where's the vodka"

5. Acceptance.  "Ok ok ok, I've heard Boomtown's as good if not better than Glastonbury anyway, I'm doing that"

 

And no, I didn't get a sniff at ticket, but yes I can't see a fairer way of selling them.

 

 

can't see me getting to stage 5. Maybe I'm starting to get old but coming upto 10 years of going to festivals, I think it's literally Glastonbury or bust now for me. If there's no ticket in my hand come May it'll either be a week abroad with all social media temporarily deleted or going down without a ticket and hoping for the best.. although at this point, the latter is not appealing 

[slash's hat]

53 minutes ago, GETOFFAMYLAWN said:

It's your point I'm refuting there, it's not for me to elaborate. Who are the masses in this scenario? More people have an internet connection than love near a record shop. More people are able to take an hour on Sunday morning off than potentially all of Sunday and all of Saturday, then factor in babysitters, transport costs, physical ability to stand out in a queue for fucking ages. What about people who are abroad? 

Other than that, it's just a stupid, unworkable idea. The record shops would need loads of staff to cope with it. There'd be the issue of distributing the tickets to all the shops, how many to each shop, how many will go "missing" in the process, how the hell are you going to print everybody's picture on the tickets to prevent touting? It'd take fucking ages to process all those people in a shop, they could have to stay open all night to do it. Then there's safety issues of having masses of people queueing up and stampeding for tickets.

The current system shifts 150k tickets in half an hour without people having to drag themselves anywhere. Introducing a way more complicated system to reward some made up notion of who is deserving is a completely pointless and massively expensive pain in the arse.

Absolutely!

Not to mention how do you decide which shops will have the most 'deserving' customer base, and therefore  decide how many tickets to allocate each store.

What if one person bags a spot near the front then 30 of their mates turn up and stand next to him/her?

What about folks with disabilities who can't camp out in front of a shop?

 

I don't like the lottery idea either. A friend of mine has applied for the London marathon last 6 years and got nowhere. Plus you are disadvantaging groups of mates that go together...That's what makes the festival for some.

[henry bear]

Yesterday showed that having large groups and/or multiple devices is no guarantee of success. Lots of tickets being bought on 3G/4G too, which points to the current system being as random as any ballot/lottery.

[Amy Lawn]

43 minutes ago, The Nal said:

You don't need to be tech savvy at all. If you can log onto the website, hit F5, Ctrl C and V you have as good a chance as anyone. 

I reckon my fancy routine of rotating between Command + R on the Mac, F5 on the PC, and swiping down on the mobile, all whilst screaming gutterally does have some savant-level skills attached to it.

[StevieMcK]

Why would See Tickets want to change their current system?  They sold over 100,000 tickets in 36 mins, processing £5M worth of transactions in real time.  

They must have been refining the ticketing process for this year too, as historically they would capture your card details and then post-process them at some point that day.  That would lead to a horrible delay between "buying your tickets" and the confirmation email coming through.  I've had friends enter the wrong digit on their card details and get a horrible email hours later, telling them they didn't in fact have tickets.

Everyone talks of moving to a ballot system, but there is a ballot in place at present... ie do you make a request to the booking page, at the exact moment the load balancer has a space available on one of the processing servers.

[SteveTLizard]

31 minutes ago, mufcok said:

can't see me getting to stage 5. Maybe I'm starting to get old but coming upto 10 years of going to festivals, I think it's literally Glastonbury or bust now for me. If there's no ticket in my hand come May it'll either be a week abroad with all social media temporarily deleted or going down without a ticket and hoping for the best.. although at this point, the latter is not appealing 

Yep, done the week abroad off grid a couple of times.  Tricky now the saucepan lids are in School though.  I still ended up listening to Worthy FM by the pool and streaming BBC coverage just to kick myself in the nuts while I was there.

I'll be giving it a bloody good crack in the resale and any competitions that crop up, not holding out a huge amount of hope though.

Have you thought about working the festival, Oxfam stewarding or the like?  People that have done it swear by it, some even do it every year rather than even try for a ticket.  Pluses are decent camp with food and drink and hot showers. Downside would be you couldn't get too messed up as you need to be reasonably conscious when you rock up for your shift.

 

 

[gizmoman]

Ha! Once the sale is over everybody wants a "fair" system, the rest of the time everyone on here is looking for tips to increase their chances of getting a ticket (at the expense of others trying of course). We all want a fair system as long as we get tickets first!.

On a serious note, the assumption that people with multiple devices ip's etc. have a proportionally greater chance of getting through is flawed IMO. there may be some advantage but no one on here knows for sure exactly how seetickets administer the sale, they could for example prioritise bookings with 2 or 3 regs over those with 6. We've seen the 60 refreshes per minute limit this year but what other systems do they have in place  that we don't know about?

Logically having 6 devices gives you 6 times more chances but in reality it doesn't seem to. Same with the multiple F5ing, I've never failed to get tickets (and by that I mean me personally not relying on others in a group). and I don't use F5.

[Crazyfool01]

1 hour ago, glastolover19 said:

Yeah,unfortunately most companies don't allow you to take just 30mins off though

I used to arrange my breaks around it .... although again not always possible depending on what you do 

[FuzzyDunlop]

53 minutes ago, Peter_Quaife said:

1. Can you still purchase up to 6 tix in the resale, but require the full amount for each ticket?

 

4 in the resale.

51 minutes ago, SteveTLizard said:

 

5. Acceptance.  "Ok ok ok, I've heard Boomtown's as good if not better than Glastonbury anyway, I'm doing that"

Boomtown was amazing this year... that good that I nearly didnt try for a glastonbury ticket yesterday. I would highly recommend it.

[SteveTLizard]

1 minute ago, FuzzyDunlop said:

4 in the resale.

Boomtown was amazing this year... that good that I nearly didnt try for a glastonbury ticket yesterday. I would highly recommend it.

Nice one, I'm fairly convinced me and the missus are going to do it for our "no kids" proper festival next year. 

We went in 2010 when it was in the grounds of Stowe school.  It was tiny then, nice vibe to though.

[FuzzyDunlop]

1 minute ago, SteveTLizard said:

Nice one, I'm fairly convinced me and the missus are going to do it for our "no kids" proper festival next year. 

We went in 2010 when it was in the grounds of Stowe school.  It was tiny then, nice vibe to though.

I might see you there. I did a load of overtime last month to be paid at the end of this. That would pay for my ticket if I buy it in the first wave. I was definitely going to go if I failed yesterday - now Im not 100% sure.... Im seriously tempted though.

[glastolover19]

9 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

I used to arrange my breaks around it .... although again not always possible depending on what you do 

I would if could mate but usually start at 8 on Sunday and just wouldn't be possible then would save a days hol but then again it's worth it

[glastolover19]

13 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

Ha! Once the sale is over everybody wants a "fair" system, the rest of the time everyone on here is looking for tips to increase their chances of getting a ticket (at the expense of others trying of course). We all want a fair system as long as we get tickets first!.

On a serious note, the assumption that people with multiple devices ip's etc. have a proportionally greater chance of getting through is flawed IMO. there may be some advantage but no one on here knows for sure exactly how seetickets administer the sale, they could for example prioritise bookings with 2 or 3 regs over those with 6. We've seen the 60 refreshes per minute limit this year but what other systems do they have in place  that we don't know about?

Logically having 6 devices gives you 6 times more chances but in reality it doesn't seem to. Same with the multiple F5ing, I've never failed to get tickets (and by that I mean me personally not relying on others in a group). and I don't use F5.

I've said this years ago about the system and touch wood I've been lucky for probably too long,bound to run out soon. It's not necessarily the system I have issue with its more the the unfairness of it all ie using multiple devices,ip changers etc. I know having x amount of devices doesn't guarantee success but it certainly increases the odds.

[Honeybane]

managed to get them but fucking hell had about 20 devices between 6 of us and only 1 got in.

 

6 devices got stuck on the link from Google search, shocking really

[bennyhana22]

19 minutes ago, FuzzyDunlop said:

4 in the resale.

Boomtown was amazing this year... that good that I nearly didnt try for a glastonbury ticket yesterday. I would highly recommend it.

This.

The only place I've been that comes close.

Ben

[Sasperella]

7 minutes ago, bennyhana22 said:

This.

The only place I've been that comes close.

Ben

Are you planning on doing both this year, benny? I think I am  And none of that Oxfam stewarding malarky this year. I want the real deal.....and all the messiness that inevitably entails!

[gizmoman]

16 minutes ago, glastolover19 said:

I've said this years ago about the system and touch wood I've been lucky for probably too long,bound to run out soon. It's not necessarily the system I have issue with its more the the unfairness of it all ie using multiple devices,ip changers etc. I know having x amount of devices doesn't guarantee success but it certainly increases the odds.

And yet your experience (and mine too) suggests that isn't the case, unless we're both particularly lucky.

[bennyhana22]

Just now, Sasperella said:

Are you planning on doing both this year, benny? I think I am  And none of that Oxfam stewarding malarky this year. I want the real deal.....and all the messiness that inevitably entails!

I'm a consistently one-festival-a-year person, Sas. I struggle with the indulgence of doing more than that from a family perspective etc. The only exception to that was 2017 when I blooded Child 3 at Latitude for his first festival, in addition to me going to Glastonbury.

So, it's a no from me. Boomtown was extraordinary, though I only really 'got' it by the Saturday! I'd love to do it again, as I know I'd have even more of a good time. But, realistically, that ain't happening until a fallow year or *whispers* I don't get tickets to the big one...eek!

Ben

[Bradders]

29 minutes ago, glastolover19 said:

I've said this years ago about the system and touch wood I've been lucky for probably too long,bound to run out soon. It's not necessarily the system I have issue with its more the the unfairness of it all ie using multiple devices,ip changers etc. I know having x amount of devices doesn't guarantee success but it certainly increases the odds.

I think the amount of people using multiple devices and IP changers is extremely minimal, and it doesn’t seem to help all that much anyway.

[dogeggs]

The Eavis's obviously want 100% of their tickets to go to people who'll love and respect their farm. I don't know if having a random & effortless ballot system would help them achieve that.

The system as it stands might be horribly cruel, but it favours those who love the festival enough to put themselves through the most agonising 30 minutes of the year.