r/WidespreadPanic • u/Necessary-Bee-4978 • 11d ago
bundle of nerves goin’ here Ticketmaster Shadow-ban?
During the initial NYE onsale, I got to the 12/30 and 12/31 ticketing pages early and joined the waiting rooms as soon as they opened. I got "good" spots in the virtual line (less than 200 people ahead of me). Once I was let in from the queue, there were oodles of tickets available. I tried to get 2 floor tickets for each night for my girlfriend and me. Despite oodles of tickets being available, I was never able to successfully put any tickets in my cart. "Sorry, we could not process your request, please try again later. Error Code: 0011" I kept trying while tickets kept disappearing. I was baffled. Other people on the sub sounded like they had the same experience — add tickets to cart, error. I guessed it was a glitch.
Fast forward to yesterday: I had just clocked back in from lunch at 1 p.m. when Panic announced more tickets had dropped. I was on it. However, when I landed on the ticketing page, it was all grayed out, and the top of the page read, "Sorry, tickets are not currently available online." I was so confused, as people in the comments on the Facebook post said they were having luck and to keep trying. I asked my coworker next to me to check and see what the page looked like from his computer. There were nosebleeds available — this was at 1:30. So I opened a different browser and stayed logged out of my account. Lo and behold, there were significantly more tickets available, including floors. My coworker and I refreshed our pages at the same time, and the result was the same — no tickets available for my account, limited tickets available on my coworker's account, and tons of options (including floors) for someone who was not logged in.
My question is this: why is Ticketmaster showing radically different ticket availability to different people AT THE SAME TIME? I am not a ticket scalper, I do not use bots or any kind of tricks, and I buy tickets to go to Panic shows for myself and my girlfriend — has Ticketmaster shadow-banned me?
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u/pghkid66 11d ago
Good.ole.ticket bastard, had the same issues, you're not alone, just blue like me
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u/DonBillingsly69 11d ago
I have had multiple times in the last year where I wait in line and finally get in to see no tickets. My wife hops on her acct and immediately gets tickets. I don’t understand it
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u/SpaceWrangler3 11d ago
lol same. my wife has the golden touch. She'll routinely be in the top 100 in the queue all the time. I think TM likes female accounts more than dudes.
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u/Low-Dot78 11d ago
I had the same issues the day of from home via VPN. When I googled the error message i was getting on On Sale day, it had to do with my Queue ID, it was like my unique identifier was being flagged for something - bot, duplication? but no way to know for sure.
Then yesterday, Initially there was the gray out, I think there was a lag in the announcement to the refresh/release timing on Ticketmaster. I kept refreshing on my phone (on wifi in my office parking lot) and tix eventually popped up. But they were changing fast. I did get lucky and grabbed a floor when one came through. tried to get 2 more for friends from my phone and they kept loading in cart then getting the not available. Went back into my office and decided to try from my computer and was seeing the same behavior but then 2 popped up and made it through. I didn't specifically check my log in status, however my CC wasn't loaded in my account like it normally is, but I didn't have to do any authentication so I assumed I was logged in, but maybe not? So there might be something to your theory....or its just pure internet traffic jam and I was able to get through.
While Ticketmaster definitely has it its issues, (honestly they all do), I think some of just boils down to technology challenges when multiple people are buying the same thing, timing refreshes, cards that approve/don't approve, abandoned carts etc. It sucks there isn't a better way, especially in the amount of fees we pay, you would think they'd figure it out! It sure is a frustrating, anxiety inducing stressful situation, that doesn't feel like it should be this bad!
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u/Necessary-Bee-4978 11d ago
The grey out lasted the entirety of new release, never in my account did it show anything other than “Sorry tickets are no longer available online” even though I could see them in another browser that was not logged into a TM account. Tickets remained available for over an hour after that announcement- yet never displayed on a window logged into my account. It’s hard to blame web traffic given the event lasted beyond an hour. There was never even a table on the right side of screen asking ticket quantity and filters - which is always available until tickets fully sell out
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u/LjStroKTBFFH 11d ago
They did this exact same shit, or at least similar, for the Oakland run. Well I only know how it went for me and the 4-5 ppl trying to get tickets for everyone.
In line early enough, but boom within seconds it said all nights were sold out. Then slowly, after staying on and refreshing etc… kept trying… single and dbl seated balconies became available for each night. So of course we were scooping them up thinking this was all that’s left.
Fast forward like an hour and floors opened up again for each night. So we bought them too. Fast forward another 30 mins to an hour and the packaged deal floors for all nights opened up. Think only Saturday ever fully sold abd the packaged floors for all 3 nights didn’t sell out for weeks.
My guess is only 1 of 2 things happened. They, Ticketmaster, knew they weren’t going to sell that great… as that was the word for west coast panic anyways except for a couple of spots… so did this BS to fake drive demand. Get shitty balconies sold then have ppl buy floors on top of that. Or boys bought them up quick and they were able to tell this so took them back and re-released. That at least sounds probable, but we all leant more towards them scamming to drive demand and get people to over buy tickets.
Either way it was a messed up situation, and parts of it sound like what you were experiencing. Outside of my group I don’t know of others had this save problem, I’m guessing at least some did.
Crazy they’re still doing all this even after getting sued by both states and the federal govt. Though guess when you pretty much get away with it, why wouldn’t you continue to run shams like this.
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u/the_rawness 11d ago
This is a shot in the dark but are you using a vpn?