JOHNSON – The stress of buying concert tickets these days

OMG … OMG … OMG.

No … that’s not excitement of getting the tickets, well it is, but its also the anxiety ridden stress over the process of procuring them … but let me back up.

I spent my first 35 years in Vancouver, and I was the type of kid that went to almost every cool, unusual and potentially cringy concert I could afford to attend.  Some memories are very firmly etched as pivotal moments; Bob Marley at the Kerrisdale Arena, the series of summer concert festivals at the old Empire stadium at the PNE and a very long list of concerts in the old Coliseum, B.C. Place, GM Place and especially The Commodore Ballroom.

There were a huge number of evenings spent at the Yale Hotel Saloon Blues and Jazz club, when Motown greats would pass through town and climb on that tiny stage for jam sessions: Elle Fitzgerald, BB King, Stevie Wonder, The Commodores, Smokey Robinson and the Tower of Power horn section most nights.

In later years, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Jeff Healey and a bunch of other blues greats showed up and jammed.  These weren’t formal concerts at all, no tickets, all you had to do was show up and buy a beer.

Or at the Smiling Budda, where I cut my punk teeth … the music was alternative and loud; DOA, The Young Canadians, 54-40, The Subhumans, Dead Kennedys, etc.

Growing up I was the tall, big guy in the group with a moustache, so I could get in most bars at 15 years old.  Couldn’t get away with that these days.

Concert going meant doing the steps to obtaining tickets.  I became good at finding out about what was coming to town, and heading down to Ticketmaster in Pacific Mall or Seymour Street early Saturday morning to line up, as back then that was the only way to get tickets at all.

All they took (and all the economy worked on back then) was cash, and in return you got your little business card thick printed ticket that had that perforation line where it would get torn at the door.  It was really important to not let that get separated before the show, or they wouldn’t let you in.

Eventually, life circumstance and change finally had me leave Vancouver behind.  Since then and until today I don’t go to too many concerts, but there have been a few times I’ve gone down to Vancouver to see a show, but over the decades my musical interests have changed a lot, and the shows I will see live, need to be special to make the trip.

That’s what came up recently.
April 14 at the Queen Elisabeth Theatre, Vancouver – Jacob Collier.

Most readers probably wouldn’t recognise the name.  He’s 29 years old and from England, and he came up as a youngster making those vocal singing multitrack Youtube videos that were all the rage in the 2010’s.  This is when I found him.

As a teenager he was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and had an 8-octave voice without a falsetto.  Supremely talented kid, and I have followed him since then as he released five albums, won three or four Grammy awards and became part of the who’s who of top end pop and jazz collaboration.

Recently he played piano at the Grammys for Joni Mitchell.  His concerts are pretty much one man shows with a lot of audience participation. If interested I recommend spending a bit of time scrolling his Youtube Channel.

So … I’m thinking I needed to see this.  Step one as always … find someone to go with.  HATE going to concerts alone, music is to be shared.  An old friend in Vancouver with the same eclectic music proclivities as I, said yes, so online a‘buyin I go.

This is when the story starts.

Where else in this monopolized world of ticket sales does one go but to Ticketmaster.ca – on my home computer here.  Once I found seats and prices I agreed with, I check a plethora of secondary sites that flog tickets, just to find that the very same row and section was up to twice the price.  Back to Ticketmaster.

I find the show, find the tickets, and manage the right buttons to organize such purchase … so far so good, pretty easy.  I’m a pro concert goer and capable website and tech operator. My confidence is high.

Assign credit card to purchase, la-tee-da … hit OK.

I get a pop up I didn’t expect.  From my credit card company telling me they are going to send me a text with a code number I was to enter in the box, and they are sending it to the phone number attached to the account … and they show me part of that number.  It happens to be our home landline phone number.  There was no other option to assign the text code to another phone … like my cell phone.

Now … I instantly realize that landlines aren’t so good at receiving texts, but I hit ‘send code’ anyway to see what happens. The home landline doesn’t ring … try again … nothing.  In the past Telus may have provided a text to talk function just for moments like these … but we may have turned that off.  The phone doesn’t ring.

Great … that sense of confidence is slipping.

I go into my online Ticketmaster sign-in settings and apply my cell phone number to that account … could work, tried to buy again … it didn’t.

Now I phone Ticketmaster, talk to a person who basically says I ‘have to call my credit card company and change the phone number attached to the card, to a cell phone so I can receive the text’ … no other option. No, they can’t perform the purchase on the phone … he said incredulously to the old guy on the line with him.

I try the whole process again just in case something changed and I find myself gazing at our landline phones display, hoping, but I don’t see any texts.  Ya … I know, they don’t do that.

OK … so let’s try this … go to the credit card online log-in as I usually do to check statements and pay bills, and buried way too deeply in those settings menus is changing the account phone number … YAY … changed it to my cell phone.

The confidence needle is again peeking up again.
Gave it a few minutes, tried to buy tickets again … YAY … purchase made.

I am a pro.  Did the short dad dance.

Something to know: the Ticketmaster website is so poorly designed, that if you go as far as to actually make a purchase, and it fails as it did five times for me, the only way to try again is to actually close the tab and start from scratch at the Ticketmaster home page.  There is no backwards navigation in the browser, it just locks up with the popup expecting a text code, so you have to start again every time.

This all means that each attempt to make this purchase took about 15 minutes.
This purchase took hours.  I was stressed out, wishing I could stand in line on Seymour Street to buy a piece of cardboard.

Oh … but we are not done. The corporate overlords aren’t finished with me yet.

So, I think … great, we got tickets, but how do I actually get the tickets?

I soon realize there is no print option as there was in previous years, and no ‘snail mail tickets to me’ option either anymore.  There is no longer any form of ticket to take to the door, physical tickets or printouts are just not a thing.

I learn I have to install the Ticketmaster app on my cell phone, go through the entire setup and sign in process on this app I don’t want, to eventually get the purchased tickets to show up in this app … along with a warning that access to this is ‘online only, and given potential online access issues at venues’, they recommend adding the tickets to Google Wallet so they can be accessed offline.  They provide a button to do exactly this.

Good idea … if you use such dumb payment services.

Now … I don’t use Google Wallet, or any apps that 1) have access to my credit card or 2) let me pay for anything with a ‘tap’.  I’m good and fairly up to date with the tech ecosystem … but that doesn’t mean I play along.  I pay with a debit and credit card.  Attaching financial access to a piece of tech that I could lose is not a change I am willing to make.

So now I’m in a quandary.
My imagination takes me to the day standing outside the venue with my friend, suddenly realizing that due to … whatever … I don’t have access to the tickets because I can’t get to the website.  This is not a moment I am willing to experience.

So, like a good little corporate capitulator, I’m now installing Google Wallet on my phone and transferring the tickets to that, then playing around in there to understand how to use an app that any 15-year-old can run with their eyes closed.  I figured it out.

At the end of the day;
– we have tickets,
– they are at the Ticketmaster website,
– they are in my new and desperately unwanted Google Wallet,
– and I’m now getting Ticketmaster ads and Google ads on my phone.

Like I said at first … omg … that was stressful.
But I think we will get in the door.

Was it all worth it?  Ask me after the show.
And hope I don’t lose my phone before then.
The day after the show,
I’m definitely removing this junk ad malware off my phone.

I knew there was a reason I don’t go to concerts much these days.
Feeling a bit older, sure I’ll admit that,
but maybe a printed piece of cardboard, paid for with cash, actually is better,
at least it was certainly easier for a customer,
that’s been around long enough to have know better.

David Johnson is a Kamloops resident, community volunteer and self described maven of all things Canadian.