If you read only one blog full of ranting and raving about sports (local and otherwise), movies, TV shows, miscellaneous pop culture, life and other assorted flotsam and jetsam, make it this one!

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Half The Price, Twice The Hassle

I found a half-price ticket offer for the B-52's concert this Friday at the Electric Factory at PhillyDealYo (I'm not crazy about that name), a site connected to Philly.com that has daily specials. Usually these deals are for restaurants or shops, not for concerts. "$50.00 ticket for $25.00" was the offer. I've wanted to see the B-52's in concert but $50.00 is out of my price range. So is $25.00, probably, but I bought one anyway.

So I signed up, and once the minimum number of purchases were made and the deal became official (if they don't reach that minimum they cancel the offer) I received an email with instructions on how to get my ticket. I had to print out a voucher and take it to the Electric Factory box office. The voucher said I could redeem it during normal hours, including the day of the show.

Yesterday, since I was downtown, not far from the Electric Factory, I decided to head over to the box office and get my ticket so I wouldn't have to wait in line the night of the show. At the window I handed the woman the voucher. She and another woman looked at it and told me I had to bring it back the night of the show. "That's not what it says," I explained, and repeated the instructions on the voucher. I then stood there, in the 90-degree late afternoon sun, for about 20 minutes while the two women tried to figure out what to do, sometimes entering info into the computers; I think one woman got on the phone with someone at one point. Apparently this was the first time they had to deal with such a promotion. Eventually they determined that it was a deal between the PhillyDealYo site and Ticketmaster, and Ticketmaster had to authorize the discount ticket, and one woman said "we put in the request to Ticketmaster but I don't know how long it's going to take." Or something like that. It was only a minute or two after that when the ticket finally printed out.

(In case you still want to go, I checked the Ticketmaster site and it seems the actual ticket price is $39.50, but their added fees are $10.20; apparently, if you go to the Electric Factory box office and pay cash you can avoid the Ticketbastard fees.)

I only hope that I don't get half the entertainment for the half-price ticket!

1 comment:

iconjohn said...

Just another reason I rarely ever go to shows anymore. B-52's are a tired act. I saw them in 79 at Penn and 1980 at the Tower. Call me jaded but the lost it when the guitarist Ricky passed away.