2019 TICKET CHAT

[glastolover19]

4 minutes ago, JMDS said:

I like the notion that you have to work for the ticket.  No drama, No sweat, No sleepless nights, No caffeine addiction,  No harrowing dreams, No phoning your work IT to find out how the intergeek actually works, no flexing your finger in the weeks up to it with just an email at some point in future that your group has tickets or not.  Then the group flakes when one doesn't quite fancy the thought of potentially falling down the longdrop.

 

 

 

I'm just suggesting an idea to make it more fair and even for everyone and I don't for one second imagine they will be taken aboard but I just don't think the current system is fair. However on the other hand I understand its a business at the end of the day and as long as the current system shifts the tickets then it will be continued to be used.

[glastolover19]

10 minutes ago, JMDS said:

I like the notion that you have to work for the ticket.  No drama, No sweat, No sleepless nights, No caffeine addiction,  No harrowing dreams, No phoning your work IT to find out how the intergeek actually works, no flexing your finger in the weeks up to it with just an email at some point in future that your group has tickets or not.  Then the group flakes when one doesn't quite fancy the thought of potentially falling down the longdrop.

 

 

 

I do however agree with you that you should work for it,however I don't see how having 20-30 mates trying for you is really working for it. Me personally I'd bring back actually having to buy a ticket from a shop. Obviously you can't because of photo tickets but I bet the numbers would drop if did. No system is perfect and if its up to me I'd let everyone in

[JMDS]

5 minutes ago, glastolover19 said:

I do however agree with you that you should work for it,however I don't see how having 20-30 mates trying for you is really working for it. Me personally I'd bring back actually having to buy a ticket from a shop. Obviously you can't because of photo tickets but I bet the numbers would drop if did. No system is perfect and if its up to me I'd let everyone in

Depends how you look at it!  if you're asking 20-30 mates to help you out who aren't going ......that really is working for it as you'll be owing all of them big time.  Plus the current method It's all hype for the festival and helps generate a media storm and even more demand.  Can't see the longevity in a ballot despite on paper being fairer method.  

 

Thinking about it maybe you could run them alongside each other say you register for the ballot or the free for all (crazed 900 devices, 1700 mates across the world, ex gfs, witchcraft, bribes etc), but not both.

[Cockney_Jesus]

8 hours ago, glastolover19 said:

I didn't say it favours any demographic. I just don't see how it's fair when you got guys with 5-6devices running against a guy with 1 device 

I only had one device (my phone) and managed to get tickets. I know people with several who never made it past the holding page. Luck of the draw sometimes I guess.

[Smash1984]

We were lucky. Me and the wife had 3 devices on the go, my phone on 4G, laptop on WiFi and an iPad hotspotting from the wifes phone on 4G. Laptop got straight into the enter tickets details but didn't get any further. Wife got through on the iPad (her phone) but just as we were about to pay her sister text to say she had got hers. I stupidly left her details on our list when she'd already told me she was on another list and not to worry. Lucky for us we went back two stages took her out and then back through to payment. Horrible 30mins but so happy we got them

[Havors]

It's time for Mike and Emily to buy all the neighbouring land and make Glasto even bigger.... and make it 2 weeks long....

[Keithy]

8 hours ago, glastolover19 said:

I do however agree with you that you should work for it,however I don't see how having 20-30 mates trying for you is really working for it. Me personally I'd bring back actually having to buy a ticket from a shop. Obviously you can't because of photo tickets but I bet the numbers would drop if did. No system is perfect and if its up to me I'd let everyone in

Then you don't appreciate the co-ordinated action and effort that goes in to ensure you have a well drilled and efficient operation of a big group trying for tickets. It's not just about 20-30 all trying at 9am. My groups preparation starts a few weeks before the actual sale time.

[Glastobuddy]

Managed to get in via an iPhone 5 on the works WiFi (1 x laptop, 1 x PC, 1 x iPhone 8, 1 x iPad also in play) after confirming our parties details i kept getting a "no deposit tickets available" message so i was unable to select tickets from the drop down bars.  Kept hitting back and proceed for 8 minutes (9:20 to 9:28) to finally complete the transaction! 

[robalotalob]

A fairer system would be for everyone to go into a pool until a maximum figure was reached, then applicants picked out at random from the pool.

[glastolover19]

18 minutes ago, Keithy said:

Then you don't appreciate the co-ordinated action and effort that goes in to ensure you have a well drilled and efficient operation of a big group trying for tickets. It's not just about 20-30 all trying at 9am. My groups preparation starts a few weeks before the actual sale time.

I prepare in advance and I'm one guy using one device,the prep is effectivly same regardless of it being a group or an individual. The problem is having 20-30guys all using multiple devices jamming up the whole system. It's now at a point where the hard work is not necessarily rewarded as its more about how many devices you have or what ip changer you use or how many Facebook/Twitter buddies you can recruit to do your bidding. I just think there could be a fairer system for all. Btw I'm saying this as someone who has always been very lucky with tickets and was this year so it's not some butthurt reaction I'm just saying it's something that should be looked at. However on the other hand I understand its a business and as long as it shifts tickets then the current system will remain

[fatyeti24]

9 hours ago, glastolover19 said:

I do however agree with you that you should work for it,however I don't see how having 20-30 mates trying for you is really working for it. Me personally I'd bring back actually having to buy a ticket from a shop. Obviously you can't because of photo tickets but I bet the numbers would drop if did. No system is perfect and if its up to me I'd let everyone in

That'd be awful.  I'm old enough to remember that being the way that tickets used to have to be bought.  For popular events, people would queue outside overnight to be there at opening time.  Which might be a laugh if you're a teenager and there with your mates, but not so much if you have a job/kids/it's pissing down, or happen to live a good distance from your nearest ticket shop.

There are going to be good and bad points about the current system, but I'd take it over a return to the old ways!

Edited October 8, 2018 by fatyeti24

[glastolover19]

10 minutes ago, fatyeti24 said:

That'd be awful.  I'm old enough to remember that being the way that tickets used to have to be bought.  For popular events, people would queue outside overnight to be there at opening time.  Which might be a laugh if you're a teenager and there with your mates, but not so much if you have a job/kids/etc, or happen to live a good distance from your nearest ticket shop.

There are going to be good and bad points about the current system, but I'd take it over a return to the old ways!

I remember it too mate and whilst not ideal it would reward the dedicated more then the current system.

Edited October 8, 2018 by glastolover19

[Keithy]

An 'in defence of See Tickets post' as an IT Infrastructure Manager....

Putting aside the system used to purchase tickets (lottery, current system, etc) as that is a purely Glastonbury Festival decision, the actual capability of the ticket purchasing system is down to pure money. If you want more capable infrastructure, Glastonbury Festivals will have to pay for it.

Because ultimately, GF does not have an IT infrastructure and effectively 'rents' one from See Tickets of the purpose of the ticket sale. I'd imagine Glastonbury have that on a fixed term contract at quite a reasonable rate as for a ticket purchasing company like See Tickets, it's a nice high profile one to have like Wimbledon, Olympics, etc

So GF will agree a contract with See that will probably be based around:

1. An Service Level Agreement (SLA) for server uptime, usually the five 9's (99.999%). That'll be uptime for the servers being available not you being able to connect to them

2. An SLA for capacity. i.e how many sessions can they hold on their front end web servers that present the holding page. That might be a figure like 10,000 connections. That will require a certain number of servers, each with a defined number of processors and memory to deliver that SLA

3. An SLA for transactions processed. For example this might a sufficient payment infrastructure to process 1000 transactions a minute. Again that will require a certain number of servers, each with a defined number of processors and memory to deliver that SLA

So if the current infrastructure isn't fit for purpose, the only thing that can solve that is money. More servers? Pay See more money. More processors? Pay See more money. Etc.

Having dealt with cloud hosted infrastructures (which is what See use), I can assure you that won't be cheap even with GF's 'cheaper rate' (which is only an assumption).

 

So ultimately, do you want GF to spend quite a bit more money on See tickets infrastructure for a sale that lasts 30 minutes or spend it on the festival. I know what one I want and it's not See. If your answer is 'I want a ticketing system that works, etc' then suggest to GF that they either (a) put the ticket prices up or (b) spend less money on the actual festival and more on See.

[Keithy]

13 minutes ago, fatyeti24 said:

That'd be awful.  I'm old enough to remember that being the way that tickets used to have to be bought.  For popular events, people would queue outside overnight to be there at opening time.  Which might be a laugh if you're a teenager and there with your mates, but not so much if you have a job/kids/it's pissing down, or happen to live a good distance from your nearest ticket shop.

There are going to be good and bad points about the current system, but I'd take it over a return to the old ways!

Yep. I still have horrible memories of camping out in the rain all day and overnight at Exeter Uni to get a ticket to see Oasis ? at Exeter Westpoint in '97. To do that now would mean taking at least one day off work which is a bonkers solution to buying a ticket.

[fatyeti24]

9 minutes ago, glastolover19 said:

I remember it too mate and whilst not ideal it would reward the dedicated more then the current system.

Well, sort of.

I used to live in Manchester city centre.  Going to a shop would have been easy.  I now live in Cumbria, a good car drive from anywhere.  Does moving house make me less dedicated than I was?  I also now work every Sunday morning, so I'd have to find someone to cover me while I took the time to get to a shop (I'm self employed so not easy!), not something that matters under the present system.

I don't think any of this plays into 'dedication', it's just life.  I can't base my life around what would make T-Day easier.  I don't think people should be penalised due to work or geography etc, so that's why I think the current system is about as fair as it can be.

[glastolover19]

5 minutes ago, Keithy said:

An 'in defence of See Tickets post' as an IT Infrastructure Manager....

Putting aside the system used to purchase tickets (lottery, current system, etc) as that is a purely Glastonbury Festival decision, the actual capability of the ticket purchasing system is down to pure money. If you want more capable infrastructure, Glastonbury Festivals will have to pay for it.

Because ultimately, GF does not have an IT infrastructure and effectively 'rents' one from See Tickets of the purpose of the ticket sale. I'd imagine Glastonbury have that on a fixed term contract at quite a reasonable rate as for a ticket purchasing company like See Tickets, it's a nice high profile one to have like Wimbledon, Olympics, etc

So GF will agree a contract with See that will probably be based around:

1. An Service Level Agreement (SLA) for server uptime, usually the five 9's (99.999%). That'll be uptime for the servers being available not you being able to connect to them

2. An SLA for capacity. i.e how many sessions can they hold on their front end web servers that present the holding page. That might be a figure like 10,000 connections. That will require a certain number of servers, each with a defined number of processors and memory to deliver that SLA

3. An SLA for transactions processed. For example this might a sufficient payment infrastructure to process 1000 transactions a minute. Again that will require a certain number of servers, each with a defined number of processors and memory to deliver that SLA

So if the current infrastructure isn't fit for purpose, the only thing that can solve that is money. More servers? Pay See more money. More processors? Pay See more money. Etc.

Having dealt with cloud hosted infrastructures (which is what See use), I can assure you that won't be cheap even with GF's 'cheaper rate' (which is only an assumption).

 

So ultimately, do you want GF to spend quite a bit more money on See tickets infrastructure for a sale that lasts 30 minutes or spend it on the festival. I know what one I want and it's not See. If your answer is 'I want a ticketing system that works, etc' then suggest to GF that they either (a) put the ticket prices up or (b) spend less money on the actual festival and more on See.

Surely then the best thing to do is either go for a completely different system(ballot/lottery) or you wait for the seeticket contract to run out and negotiate with a different supplier to get a better deal ie more servers,lower admin costs which then could be used to lower ticket prices or put into festival or charitable causes.

[Mr.Tease]

16 minutes ago, glastolover19 said:

I remember it too mate and whilst not ideal it would reward the dedicated more then the current system.

I don't really agree that being more 'dedicated' means you deserve a ticket more than anyone else- it just favours those who have been before and disadvantages those that haven't- we were all first timers once, and most of us tried it out on kind of a whim rather than as part of a dedicated mission.

I don't know, more people want to go than can, but I don't really feel comfortable with the idea that some deserve to go more than others- tis a slippery slope that ends up being quite exclusionary. 

[Crazyfool01]

14 minutes ago, Keithy said:

An 'in defence of See Tickets post' as an IT Infrastructure Manager....

Putting aside the system used to purchase tickets (lottery, current system, etc) as that is a purely Glastonbury Festival decision, the actual capability of the ticket purchasing system is down to pure money. If you want more capable infrastructure, Glastonbury Festivals will have to pay for it.

Because ultimately, GF does not have an IT infrastructure and effectively 'rents' one from See Tickets of the purpose of the ticket sale. I'd imagine Glastonbury have that on a fixed term contract at quite a reasonable rate as for a ticket purchasing company like See Tickets, it's a nice high profile one to have like Wimbledon, Olympics, etc

So GF will agree a contract with See that will probably be based around:

1. An Service Level Agreement (SLA) for server uptime, usually the five 9's (99.999%). That'll be uptime for the servers being available not you being able to connect to them

2. An SLA for capacity. i.e how many sessions can they hold on their front end web servers that present the holding page. That might be a figure like 10,000 connections. That will require a certain number of servers, each with a defined number of processors and memory to deliver that SLA

3. An SLA for transactions processed. For example this might a sufficient payment infrastructure to process 1000 transactions a minute. Again that will require a certain number of servers, each with a defined number of processors and memory to deliver that SLA

So if the current infrastructure isn't fit for purpose, the only thing that can solve that is money. More servers? Pay See more money. More processors? Pay See more money. Etc.

Having dealt with cloud hosted infrastructures (which is what See use), I can assure you that won't be cheap even with GF's 'cheaper rate' (which is only an assumption).

 

So ultimately, do you want GF to spend quite a bit more money on See tickets infrastructure for a sale that lasts 30 minutes or spend it on the festival. I know what one I want and it's not See. If your answer is 'I want a ticketing system that works, etc' then suggest to GF that they either (a) put the ticket prices up or (b) spend less money on the actual festival and more on See.

so being totally ignorant ... what do these things cost ?

[tomainley]

I imagine it would be even more frustrating to miss out on tickets if there was a ballot / lottery system.

[glastolover19]

1 minute ago, fatyeti24 said:

Well, sort of.

I used to live in Manchester city centre.  Going to a shop would have been easy.  I now live in Cumbria, a good car drive from anywhere.  Does moving house make me less dedicated than I was?  I also now work every Sunday morning, so I'd have to find someone to cover me while I took the time to get to a shop (I'm self employed so not easy!), not something that matters under the present system.

I don't think any of this plays into 'dedication', it's just life.  I can't base my life around what would make T-Day easier.  I don't think people should be penalised due to work or geography etc, so that's why I think the current system is about as fair as it can be.

I live in countryside mate so going to a shop for tickets isn't exactly easy or convenient for me either. I also work Sundays and had to take yesterday off to buy tickets. I'm just suggesting an alternative that would be fairer for the masses instead of the few

[glastolover19]

5 minutes ago, Mr.Tease said:

I don't really agree that being more 'dedicated' means you deserve a ticket more than anyone else- it just favours those who have been before and disadvantages those that haven't- we were all first timers once, and most of us tried it out on kind of a whim rather than as part of a dedicated mission.

I don't know, more people want to go than can, but I don't really feel comfortable with the idea that some deserve to go more than others- tis a slippery slope that ends up being quite exclusionary. 

It wouldn't disadvantage anyone if done that way,simply would be a first come first served situation. Surely someone using 5-6devices against someone using 1 is more or a disadvantage

[Keithy]

2 minutes ago, glastolover19 said:

Surely then the best thing to do is either go for a completely different system(ballot/lottery) or you wait for the seeticket contract to run out and negotiate with a different supplier to get a better deal ie more servers,lower admin costs which then could be used to lower ticket prices or put into festival or charitable causes.

A different system would have different costs.

Currently the GF infrastructure is a (probably) some lightweight See web servers to host the Registration Page all year round and then for 3 times a year (Coach, Main, Resale) , a much bigger infrastructure for about 1 hour each time.

A lottery / ballot system would present it's own challenges. Do you have a week period where people can log on and enter the ballot? If so, even over a week that would have a high demand. That requires infrastructure. I'd imagine you'd want people to reregister every year rather than all existing reg's go in the ballot? 

Then you need an infrastructure to process the ballot and randomly select 135,000 regs. That requires infrastructure.

Then you need a payment infrastructure to allow 135,000 people to log on and pay. Do you have that open for a day, a week, a month? Requires an infrastructure.

So perversely a ballot might, over the course of a year, cost more than the current infrastructure.

As for allowing the see tickets contract to run down, that doesn't solve next year or the year after if they are in a 10 year contract taken out in 2015 for example.

Another supplier? There are very few with the capacity to sell tickets on GF's scale. They are all businesses at the end of the day and will have a minimum fixed price offer (which I suspect is what GF currently have). There comes a point where they can't make it any lower. IT has a lot of fixed costs and isn't cheap.

[CaledonianGonzo]

5 minutes ago, glastolover19 said:

It wouldn't disadvantage anyone if done that way,simply would be a first come first served situation. Surely someone using 5-6devices against someone using 1 is more or a disadvantage

People would start queuing days beforehand, so it would still advantage folk who'd have lots of holiday days and be capable of spending nights out on the streets in all weather.

[glastolover19]

3 minutes ago, Keithy said:

A different system would have different costs.

Currently the GF infrastructure is a (probably) some lightweight See web servers to host the Registration Page all year round and then for 3 times a year (Coach, Main, Resale) , a much bigger infrastructure for about 1 hour each time.

A lottery / ballot system would present it's own challenges. Do you have a week period where people can log on and enter the ballot? If so, even over a week that would have a high demand. That requires infrastructure. I'd imagine you'd want people to reregister every year rather than all existing reg's go in the ballot? 

Then you need an infrastructure to process the ballot and randomly select 135,000 regs. That requires infrastructure.

Then you need a payment infrastructure to allow 135,000 people to log on and pay. Do you have that open for a day, a week, a month? Requires an infrastructure.

So perversely a ballot might, over the course of a year, cost more than the current infrastructure.

As for allowing the see tickets contract to run down, that doesn't solve next year or the year after if they are in a 10 year contract taken out in 2015 for example.

Another supplier? There are very few with the capacity to sell tickets on GF's scale. They are all businesses at the end of the day and will have a minimum fixed price offer (which I suspect is what GF currently have). There comes a point where they can't make it any lower. IT has a lot of fixed costs and isn't cheap.

I do understand how it works and how you need the infrastructure to support it but I also understand business and the need to negotiate/shop around for a better deal and maybe if another supplier got the contract then some of that extra glasto dollar would help them create a better/fairer system. 

[Amy Lawn]

16 minutes ago, glastolover19 said:

I'm just suggesting an alternative that would be fairer for the masses instead of the few

It wouldn't be fairer for the masses instead of the few though