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Tickets , Tips and Tricks


Crazyfool01
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6 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Really interesting post, I'm fairly tech savvy but I find this in general pretty interesting. Could you give me some insight into what happened with my experience please?

 

I got through to the reg page, then got through to the payment page! It said tickets were being held for 4 or so minutes. I put my payment details then click buy for the the page to just hang and hang. Nothing happened at all! Then after several tries of that it comes back to the payment page saying that the allotted time has run out and the tickets are allocated elsewhere. I then try again on the reg page to get through to the payment page with no luck and it then says sold out. Half way through typing a message on here I get an email from SeeTickets with my deposit confirmation and I had managed to be successful with the page hung after entering payment details.

Firstly, the tickets being held for 4 minutes I believe is just locking your registration details until you either complete the purchase or close the session. I haven't really checked this out though, so that is just a hunch.

When you clicked confirm and nothing happens, something is timing out: Either your entire POST request has not been received, or it has but you have not received a response from the server. Either way it is probably because the server is handling more requests than it can reliably manage. In your case, it transpires that the POST request was received, and your card was billed, but no response was sent back from the server.
I'm not sure exactly where the POST requests are directed (thats whenever you submit the form on each page reg details/confirmation/payment), but I wouldn't be surprised if the same server which holds you on the holding page handles the form submission.

What I find interesting in your experience is that you were able to re-submit your registration details, despite having successfully bought tickets for them (you weren't aware of that at the time). It may be that there was a delay between processing your card and updating the database to show your registration details as allocated tickets. That might have something to do with why you didn't receive a response when the payment was successful.

If anyone has any more network traffic data from the sale, I'd love to compare notes. I'm always a bit too pre-occupied securing my own to record it all.

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Yes, there's 135k tickets and a lot more than that on site but they aren't all hangers on though.  There's all the volunteers and the vast number of people it takes to build up and break down the site.  Sure, there are number of liggers but that isn't going to change any time soon.

Edited by nicknoxx
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22 minutes ago, Mr.Tease said:

Thanks for the explanations, I do feel better as at least I had a holding page on either 4g or on one of my WiFi browsers for most of the sale, so at least I had a chance. 

So essentially if you couldn't load the waiting page, you had 0% chance and needed to do a full cookie free fresh start each time to overcome the naff server. If you got through to the holding page you had, say a 20% chance (or at least a shot every time you refreshed)? 

No exactly: if you couldn't load the holding page it was probably because the server you had been allocated wasn't responding in time, probably because it was over-loaded. If the load on the server was reduced, then it would start to respond in time again.
I think this does happen throughout the sale occasionally, so sometimes you go from having page timeouts to getting the holding page, but in my experience it's quite rare. Infact many of the bad servers continue to timeout until after all the tickets have sold out! So you probably have a close to 0% chance.
 

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Just now, OrganicShamanic said:

No exactly: if you couldn't load the holding page it was probably because the server you had been allocated wasn't responding in time, probably because it was over-loaded. If the load on the server was reduced, then it would start to respond in time again.
I think this does happen throughout the sale occasionally, so sometimes you go from having page timeouts to getting the holding page, but in my experience it's quite rare. Infact many of the bad servers continue to timeout until after all the tickets have sold out! So you probably have a close to 0% chance.
 

That's reassuring ?

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Few wee points from the latest sale:

Again failed to secure tickets, but like all, wasnt for the want of trying.

 

Had 4 devices running, VPN to work, home wi-fi, tethered to 2 different 4g networks.

2 devices (tethered to EE 4G and work VPN) sat at the holding page from just after 9 until about 9.40am (a good bit after the festival sold out)...looks like thse 2 devices were steered down a blind alley with zero chance of success.

 

1 device didnt get to the holding device (3 network 4g)

 

My 4th device (connected to Virgin broadband at home) got through to the reg page at 9.10 and again at 9.20. Entered all 6 regs and postcodes , hit process and got the following message on both occasions:

 

'Cannot securely connect to this page'. This is on a brand new laptop. Did See Tickets not announce that they would lock in your session for 5 mins? Really thought we were sorted at this stage.

 

2 others in our group (numbered 62 people trying for just 6 tickets, family friends and work colleagues) got to enter the reg details only to get bombed out. 1 other got to enter his card details in the payment screen only to be presented with the 'Cannot securely connect to this page'...to say, like so many on here we're frustrated is an understatement. .Bit of a rant I know, but its therapeutic !

The system is as fair as can be, just hope See Tickets can sort out a way of locking people in if they get through...would have been less stressful to not have had a sniff, but to be so so close.....ahhhhhhhhh

 

We go again in April. Keep the faith !

 

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10 minutes ago, Peter_Quaife said:

Few wee points from the latest sale:

Again failed to secure tickets, but like all, wasnt for the want of trying.

 

Had 4 devices running, VPN to work, home wi-fi, tethered to 2 different 4g networks.

2 devices (tethered to EE 4G and work VPN) sat at the holding page from just after 9 until about 9.40am (a good bit after the festival sold out)...looks like thse 2 devices were steered down a blind alley with zero chance of success.

 

1 device didnt get to the holding device (3 network 4g)

 

My 4th device (connected to Virgin broadband at home) got through to the reg page at 9.10 and again at 9.20. Entered all 6 regs and postcodes , hit process and got the following message on both occasions:

 

'Cannot securely connect to this page'. This is on a brand new laptop. Did See Tickets not announce that they would lock in your session for 5 mins? Really thought we were sorted at this stage.

 

2 others in our group (numbered 62 people trying for just 6 tickets, family friends and work colleagues) got to enter the reg details only to get bombed out. 1 other got to enter his card details in the payment screen only to be presented with the 'Cannot securely connect to this page'...to say, like so many on here we're frustrated is an understatement. .Bit of a rant I know, but its therapeutic !

The system is as fair as can be, just hope See Tickets can sort out a way of locking people in if they get through...would have been less stressful to not have had a sniff, but to be so so close.....ahhhhhhhhh

 

We go again in April. Keep the faith !

 

I agree it sucks when you can't even compete for tickets by getting connecting to a home page and even worse when you get through to payment or otherwise it crashes.

Im no computer expert but can any commercial system in the world really handle millions of hits per second?  there were 2.4 million registrations so not all of them were on getting tickets but i like you said you had multiple devices on. Is it unreasonable to say there are 10 million + devices trying to connect and then on top of that people refreshing every other second? 

If there was a commercial system that could handle it would it actually be financially feasible for See tickets to have it for,  all intents and purposes, would be solely for a 30 minute window that the tickets usually sell out in? 

Think focus on the system should be on if you get to a reg screen it shouldn't crash ever. 

 

Good luck Re-sale, hope you get them!

 

Edited by aj6658
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Just now, Ozanne said:

Apple somehow manage it for the release of iPhones?

And Google can handle millions of search queries every second. But that's not relevant either.

Yes, Apple, Google, Facebook etc can handle far more traffic than the Glastonbury sale generates. But they each also spend literally billions* on buying, upgrading, and maintaining those systems every year.

*Googles spend was estimated at $2.35 billion per quarter a few years ago, and it'll have only increased since. Apple won't be much different, and Facebook won't be far behind.

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This debate naturally happens every year.

The system we have now is just about as fair and agreeable as it can be.

Those asking for a more stable beefed up system should think carefully about that and if it’s really what they want.

If everyone buys 6 tickets each that’s only 20,000 ‘slots’ to be lucky with.

A system that could truly and comfortably cope with the current demand would mean the tickets went in a couple of minutes max, which IMO would lead to way more anger and frustration.

for all its faults at least with the current system you’re pretty much guaranteed 20 minutes before you’re at risk of missing out.

At least with 20/30 minutes you’ve got time to change things and react if it’s not going your way.

Edited by Deaf Nobby Burton
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It's the best of a bad bunch of options. The only change I'd reasonably suggest is extend the 'trickle' slightly such that the tickets take longer go out and the persistent get rewarded. Wherever you draw the line, though, you'll piss people off. 

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1 hour ago, nicknoxx said:

Yes, there's 135k tickets and a lot more than that on site but they aren't all hangers on though.  There's all the volunteers and the vast number of people it takes to build up and break down the site.  Sure, there are number of liggers but that isn't going to change any time soon.

Why do the people who build and take down the site get free tickets? If i get paid to put up a marquee for a wedding I don’t expect to get invited to the wedding. 
 

 

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7 minutes ago, Smeble said:

Why do the people who build and take down the site get free tickets? If i get paid to put up a marquee for a wedding I don’t expect to get invited to the wedding. 
 

 

A lot of them need to be there, I’ve got a mate who was part of the build and he was on call a lot. I don’t think it’s Particularly practical to deny most of the people involved a ticket.

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7 minutes ago, Smeble said:

Why do the people who build and take down the site get free tickets? If i get paid to put up a marquee for a wedding I don’t expect to get invited to the wedding. 
 

 

Yeah i agree with this. They are getting paid for a service which is the build the site, unless they get a better rate by including tickets in there's no point. 

I know someone who does something at the site - flowers, or tapestry or something and he gets 2 free tickets. Shouldn't it be that having done Glastonbury you 1. get paid 2. incredible to have on your Business CV?

 

Question is how many are actually given out for free? Is it actually material in any way? If its more than 1000 then it needs to stripped back. 

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9 minutes ago, Smeble said:

Why do the people who build and take down the site get free tickets? If i get paid to put up a marquee for a wedding I don’t expect to get invited to the wedding.

Some don't.

The ones who do also usually have a role to play during the festival. There's not some great conspiracy to rob you of tickets, the number allocated to staff is perfectly justifiable.

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1 minute ago, incident said:

Some don't.

The ones who do also usually have a role to play during the festival. There's not some great conspiracy to rob you of tickets, the number allocated to staff is perfectly justifiable.

Exactly, my mate who I posted about above was on call a lot and had to be able to get to and from different places all over the site. I really don’t think it’s practical or workable for them to not have a ticket. In reality they didn’t have a ticket, they had an epo band and various other bands to get them in and out of different areas, I know it amounts to the same thing but practically speaking how else could it work?

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Scaling out to handle hundreds of thousands of concurrent requests for such a short period isn't prohibitively expensive for someone like Seetickets, but from their point of view it's unnecessary expense when they can show their client that they can sell out all 100K tickets in half hour.

It'd be fairer for the punters if they provisioned more servers and capped the number of tickets per purchase to 4, but there's no commercial need for Seetickets or GFL to do that.

What is unforgivable is not being able to service the fixed number of sessions on the payment page. They need to re-architect that part of the system.

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14 minutes ago, RaphPH said:

I think a fairer way is to make maximum of 2 tickets and children free. Cut down the large groups. Take your partner and or your best mate. All this spreadsheet and syndicate stuff is ridiculous. 

Spreadsheets and syndicates would still happen if it was just two, you’d just have 30 people churning through two at a time. Same difference really.

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There has to be some connection when you get through, buy and able to get through again. Quite a few success stories of buying tickets then buying again where as others didn’t get a sniff, including myself.

This happened with us last year, bought tickets then was able to buy again 5 minutes later on the same device but other devices didn’t get past the holding page 

Edited by TheGoodWillOut
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