Is there any way to avoid being scalped?

[raccoon]

In Spring 2019 Paul McCartney came to a city very close to me.

On a certain day, Ticketmaster put the tickets on sale. I didn’t have a American Express card or anything to give me any kind of special privileges about tickets, so at the appointed time I logged on to Ticketmaster and tried to buy some tickets.

Of course the site was just loaded with people, and bots, I’m sure. It was as I recall about half an hour before I got through. And all the tickets have been bought up by mostly bots, I’m sure. They were being resold at enormous inflated prices.

I said the hell with it.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Should I just forget about seeing any big name performer if I’m not ready to pay enormously inflated prices to these scalpers?

[ItsjustMe]

1. Ticketmaster Are The Scalpers

[ProudMNDemocrat]

2. Tried to get tickets to Queen + Adam Lambert

Ran into the same issue in 2019.

[LakeArenal]

3. I think they are all canned. But a friend did get McCartney tickets in 2018 for $250 each.

From Ticketmaster. Nose bleed. I thought $250 was wrong then. But We went and it was Fab.

Edit: Compared to paying $10 to see, Rolling Stones, Eagles and Rufus in 1970.

[FakeNoose]

4. The ones who grabbed the early tickets are now selling them on Stub Hub

... and other reselling websites. Yes it's a scam and a ripoff. But the one good thing is that the tickets you buy on Stub Hub are real tickets, being sold by people who actually did purchase them. If you were to buy tickets from someone on Craig's List (for example), or on a street corner somewhere, they are just as likely to be fake tickets.

[Layzeebeaver]

5. Just buy the vinyl.

Better acoustics.

[missingthebigdog]

6. Buy the tickets directly from the box office

At the venue.

Most box office sales begin at the same time tickets are available online, and are bot free. Some have quantity limits. They only sell at face value.

[MuseRider]

7. I sat on a ticket buying site forever

waiting, hours and hours because I had the 3rd place in line and had to be there when they opened it up or lose my place. This was for tickets for Elton John so I knew I needed to be right there. The moment it opened I was in in about 30 seconds. The only tickets that were available were all over $700.00 per seat except those behind the posts and those were $500.00. Needless to say, I saw him once and that will have to be enough. I have almost given up on every site that sells tickets.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

8. Double check your Ticketbastard settings

They'll default to showing the resale tix. When the Eagles did their last tour, there were people complaining that the only tix were $1K+, but that was because Ticketbastard was filtering out all the face value tickets. Turned on the filter to remove scalpers, and there were a lot less tickets, but they were in the $100-$250 range and not the $1-$2K range.

[lame54]

9. Here's my story...

I recently bought Pavement tickets for a show scheduled nearly a year out.
I was on the computer 20 minutes before they went on sale, fingers in position, ready to strike
The red dots representing seats started disappearing immediately
I was able to grab 4 desirable seats and headed to the pay screen
The pay screen had a countdown clock that would send the seats back into the pool if I failed to pay by then.
There were several options for extras such as VIP, parking, etc.
The countdown clock allowed me time to browse these extras to see if I wanted to add to my total - or so I thought
Well before the countdown was over a message appeared saying the seats have been bought
I scrambled back the to main screen to restart the process
I was able to grab 4 less desirable seats and rushed to pay immediately
After I payed a button popped up "click here to resell tickets"
Scalpers and bots - true fans be damned