I will never again use TicketMaster for the rest of my life. Are you also soured by their scamming ways? ~

Green stamps, Frequent flyer miles, and now 'real fan'-points. Where will it end?

I don't really take issue with reward/ loyalty programs. I think, in many cases, they're a good way to thank loyal consumers for being so. The verified fan system is different. It mandates that a buyer take extra steps and invest immense amounts of time in order to make a purchase that a customer's money enough used to be good enough for. Buying tickets to a concert shouldn't require me to spend weeks promoting the concert and performer. I am a "follower" for several musicians and belong to their email lists and such. They often give their fans early access to tickets that way- it cuts down on scalpers too. However, forcing me to be a company spokesperson just to get access to something I should be able to buy... it makes me angry and dislike the brand. It's akin to going to a grocery store and not being able to buy a gallon of milk without professing my love for the store on Twitter. Bah. 

  While I'm neither in the demographic for Taylor Swift specifically, nor would I be looking for tickets to her shows for anyone I know, that verified fan hogwash is along the lines of the scams they pull that put me off their rails. 
  I merely wanted tickets to a show, I didn't want to take out a second mortgage or drain all the blood from my body to pay for them. After drowning in 'click-here-hell' for twenty minutes (exaggerated) I got to a point on their website that "offered" me the "opportunity" to subscribe to magazines if I wanted to. I didn't want to.  The website, however, didn't have an option to decline. In order to continue the purchase, I had to select at least three magazines out of about 100 choices, with the lying promise that all I had to do was inform the publishers to stop sending them after receiving the first issues. All of this was supposedly free, too. 
  It's been two years. The magazines won't stop coming, nor will the bills for the magazines. The zap my credit card without me even doing a thing. The publishers have me; "Sir, you ordered our product, so you're liable, you must pay."  I retort, "I was only trying to buy tickets online, TicketMaster assured me I could cancel after the first issue!"  The publishers: "You'll have to take that up with TicketMaster, but in the meantime, your renewal fee is $39.99 for the year."
  So of course I go to TicketMaster. "Sir, we sell tickets, not magazines.  Third-party vendors advertise on our website, so maybe they entered some type of algorithm that you ran across . . . ". I blew my stack, "But it's your website!"  
  I've contacted the credit card company, the credit union, the Better Business Bureau, Bill Nye the Science Guy, a swami atop a mountain in Tildekistan, etc. 
  I've been back and forth. Sometimes the subscriptions stop for weeks or months, then they start up again. Sometimes a strangely-named company charges $2.37 or $11.84 or $4.00 on my credit card, I trace it back to TicketMaster service fees. 

Cut you credit card into little pieces, and tell the bank that issued it to make you a new one because you think it was stolen, there will be no more 'automatic' withdrawals after that. I ran into that trick of turning a one time payment into a recurring one too some years ago.

For the other things screenshots of the web pages that made lying promises will do wonders if it comes to a court case.

Yep, that works, I have used that myself. 

Woah. That's bad. I've never heard of anything that extreme. I know they're price-gouging, but to have the ongoing battle with random charges is unforgivable. You'd think TicketMaster would care about their reputation and only partner with reputable ad companies, but maybe they don't care because they're an industry giant, and most people have little choice whether to deal with them or not if they want to attend events. 

  I know, right?  I can't stand it when website administrators whore out their product to the lowest common denominator and the highest bidder just to line their
pockets with filthy lucre. 

I don't think we do that, if that's what you're suggesting. When people report inappropriate ads, say there are issues with them, or comment on ads that they think aren't befitting of our brand, I ban the advertiser. I've dropped advertising platforms in their entirety when they don't let me control things and they don't do a good job of it on their own. I'm dead serious about that. I spent weeks with our Taboola rep refining the stories that show, and I personally go through Google ads and Project Wonderful to remove content that's not ok. We will always have some kind of revenue generator here to at least subsidize the cost, but I won't use anything that I think harms your experience. If you ever have a genuine issue with something we run, please grab a screenshot and send it to me or get a copy/paste of the link the ad sends you to, so I can follow up on it. I mean that sincerely. 

And, please give me your credit card number too. If the magazine companies can get away with charging you for years, imagine the haul I could get. ;)

  No, no, I was just joking around; I don't think any shenanigans are going on here at AM. 
  As for my credit card number, I don't mind giving it to you at all, it's just going to be encoded because anyone and everyone can read this. 

I rather think you are drawing conclusions beyond the evidence If we must generalize, i Would focus in another 'direction' , on the strong and well known tendency if Websites to hide themselves behind a wall of automated bits that make the policy makers (and complaints department) utterly inaccessible to the customers. It is strong but not universal, jiust look at JA.

Anyway the name "Ticketmaster" really say it all, they are the masters, and you must obey. This post was edited by JakobA the unAmerican. at January 24, 2018 12:44 AM MST