Let’s talk about what went wrong with Taylor Swift Presale today. By now, you should all (hopefully) be aware that today, November 15th, was the start of a war declaration for all swifties. I myself was fortunate to get tickets, but thousands upon thousands of other die hard taylor fans were not. There are quite a few things that went wrong, and I hope to make this post cover as many as I am knowledgeable about so that in the case of future panic, concert ticket buyers can navigate the absolute hellscape that is ticketmaster. Fair warning: this post is long and winded, read at your own risk…. Screenshots will be included
Ticketmaster placed all sales on the same day with only a 1 hour buffer
In all their genius and ingenuity, TM decided to place all 52 presales (not including cap 1) on the same day. with a one. hour. buffer. If you’ve been on Twitter, you’ve seen the panic and anger from all pre-sale goers (myself included) East coast encountered many crashes and 504 bad gateway errors, not even including the “code not working” errors that eventually caused all queues to be placed on hold for over 3 hours… People couldn’t even get into waiting rooms due to site overload. Around 1 hour after this, TM told us to join using the code from our texts, but recommended using a laptop or desktop device… make it make sense? It was not any better in Central nation however. Upon joining the queue, I found myself to be behind nearly 5k people while my mom (who had gotten a code too and was trying incase my night was sold out) was behind nearly 22k people. Within 5 minutes of the queue opening, it was paused. There was no communication at all from TM for about an hour to an hour and a half. Twitter was flooded with people panicking that their codes weren’t working and the lines weren’t moving. I sat there for 4 hours until TM posted the following image.
Absolutely ridiculous. There was little to no communication about known issues or why TM couldn’t get their sh*t together in the span of 4 hours. Keep in mind I waited almost 6 hours to get tickets and others waited even longer. Stadiums were completely sold out in some cases with no update in the queue lines.
Boosts were not recognized/supported
Towards the bottom of this section I have attached a screenshot of a twitter thread discussing this. I personally feel this rumor may have some truth to it. I had no boosts, have never bought merch, and was relatively high in the line. However, I have yet to see a loverfest ticket holder who had a high place in line. The theory is that TM placed the boost holders at the end of the queue. Why? The ongoing theory is that it is for profit - TM is notorious for scalping and ripping off buyers, and it does not surprise me in the slightest that they would do this thinking that all the more dedicated swifties would be willing to spend more $$$ than the “locals.” There is a ton of outrage rn due to this. What was the point of the boosts if they didn’t work? Many boosted fans did not get any tickets as pre-sale sold out quickly.
Apparently this rumor has been confirmed from TM. See the attached picture. Seems that TM is having trouble keeping all their information consistent. Makes me wonder what exactly the boosts and loverfest did bc they defiantly did not help people get presale codes or ahead in the queue….
Dynamic Pricing + VIP packages
This is a concert lovers greatest enemy. We’ve all heard about how Ed Sheeran opted out of this, and we thought Taylor did as well…. until we walked into the gates of hell. It is still unclear if dynamic pricing is confirmed, but the prices across stadiums and pre-sale times is insane. I paid 299+fees for an 8th row lower bowl while one of my friends paid 400 for a 10th row and another only 250 for a floor ticket. There is absolutely no reason this should exist. Not only does this not detour scalpers, it simply makes the concert less accessible to people who ACTUALLY want to go. Not to mention the insane number of VIP packages available. IMO VIP should be something you add on after, not sold as an individual seat. The prices for floor VIP were 800+ for houston, and when I went to check about 2 hours after getting my tickets, they were one of the last things to be sold. These VIP packages had no communication before presale, and limited the number of good seating for people who simply wanted to watch the concert.
This was a MAJOR problem during the presale that I haven’t seen many people talking about. I’ve attached a picture of my own error below. After finally getting through to purchase tickets, I found two amazing floor seats within my price range and immediately took them only to be met with the error below. I was literally freaking out while my mom kept on trying different tickets to no avail. I finally found someone on Twitter with the same issue who said they cleared cache and cookies and it worked. Luckily, I was able to do this, reenter my code, and get tickets (although not the amazing floor ones I had in my hand previously) TM has still not replied to my questions about the error messages, and it seems that more people are coming out with the same issue I encountered. I know TM was trying to prevent bots, but someone like me who has a verified email, phone, and clearly residential email handle should not have been flagged and given this code (still don’t know why tf I got it?) Some people are speculating these errors were to limit ticket buyers to cover up TM errors in calculating how many presale tickets were available.
Lack of support and ability to contact support
As I briefly mentioned earlier, I was not helped at all by TM support. There is no easily accessible number to call TM support, and even if there were, there is no guarantee they would pick up in time. Frankly, I was absolutely infuriated with how TM handled this. The lack of texts being sent, emails being sent late into the night with no waitlists in sight, no communication on how presale was going to work. Everyone was told completely different things and no one had any idea what was going on. Add this onto cap 1 presale being pushed back to tomorrow, this is going to make a lot of people really mad. I’ve heard of peoples cards not going through, codes declining, constant ticket disappearing, getting kicked to the back of queue, TM just dropping them - it’s a nightmare. Seriously, just look up some trending Taylor Swift tags on tiktok or twitter rn… And frankly, twitters TM support is just not helpful - the below twitter user received two completely different answers when asking about how codes can be used for different nights.
I sent TM support a message nearly 48 hours ago and still have no received a response - curious as to why, but I’m not entirely surprised. Haven’t heard too much about the situation over on seatgeek.
No Reputation Style Boosts
This is another speculation, but many swifties have said TM wouldn’t allow another reputation boost style system due to the low level of scalper activity during this sale. These boosts worked insanely well to get actual fans on the sale (unlike the verified fans) and it is inferenced that bc TM makes a lot of their money from resales and scalpers, they were against using this method for a popular artist like Taylor. This style of boost could have greatly benefited people who weren’t going to resell tickets, but because of cooperate greed TM has not allowed anyone to use it again.
Literally what is says. 50k for a SINGLE floor ticket is just not it. don’t buy the resell tickets, wait it out for people to sell them at a slightly above face value. They knew people want this tour, and they’re taking advantage of that. How did so many tickets disappear and magically show up on stub hub during the queue pause? (hmmm I wonder it’s almost like that’s TM whole business model) This image is from chicago alone…. and look how many tickets are already here.
“Unprecedented” demand
*sigh* TM you were literally the ones who sent out the presale codes…. you cannot call this “unprecedented” when you literally knew the exact number of people who would be trying to get tickets. These overpriced service fees do what exactly? pay developers to pause queues and not send updates ever? People skipped work and school to buy these tickets and because of your oversight, they lost time and money and may have to miss more tomorrow to participate in Cap 1 presale. There is no other option for this volume of tickets being sold. Taylor has no option but to use this trashy, overpriced site to sell tickets to her loyal fans.
Overall, I am incredibly grateful to have even gotten a presale code. This is of no fault to Taylor or Taylor Nation - the blame lyes only on Ticketmaster. These past 48 hours have been brutal, and I know everyone is frustrated and mad at the shit show that happened today. I’m just asking any and all swifties to put your anger on TM not Taylor. She’s going to have a rough time responding to this, and I think we should make it as easy as possible for her. But most importantly, we need to hold TM accountable, there’s a reason monopoly is americas most hated game. Hopefully someone can crack down on this, but at the end of the day the only thing we can do is continue to support Taylor. Please let me know if there’s anything you think I should add to this post or want added. Thank you and I hope everyone recovers from today. <3
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