Unable to get to shop.bluegrass.com to buy tickets!!

[swander99]

Swander, although a hassle... Jen and I will be seeing you in June also!  Cheers til then

        condo or camping?

 Listening to: 

[RockyMtnGuy]

.. I was able to get to the page to order # of tickets .. after 43 minutes to navigate 2 pages, just to have it lock up loading the page to enter the pertinent info .... and finally come up saying "cart is empty".  Fortunately, my festival cohort was able to get through on the phone and get a couple tix .. so .. I will make the 8th consecutive TBF.

  The network/server issues should not have occurred.  The load was anticipated and should have been modeled and requisite server capacity at least rented for the week.  This scenario is most likely going to play out the rest of the week for the other event sales.

Yes, we did end up getting tickets (via phone), however, there could have been more done by the IT department/folks to alleviate alot of unnecessary aggravations.

[JoeBu]

.. I was able to get to the page to order # of tickets .. after 43 minutes to navigate 2 pages, just to have it lock up loading the page to enter the pertinent info .... and finally come up saying "cart is empty".  Fortunately, my festival cohort was able to get through on the phone and get a couple tix .. so .. I will make the 8th consecutive TBF.

  The network/server issues should not have occurred.  The load was anticipated and should have been modeled and requisite server capacity at least rented for the week.  This scenario is most likely going to play out the rest of the week for the other event sales.

Yes, we did end up getting tickets (via phone), however, there could have been more done by the IT department/folks to alleviate alot of unnecessary aggravations.

...and then you'll be on here complaining about the ridiculous convenience fees.

[hooterroll]

Neither yet. Hoping some TP's come our way. Gonna grab some type of lodging til then.. Just in case... Worst case I'll see you at Bloody's and for our 2nd annual Monday night jam session!!!!

[Auntie Hope]

.. I was able to get to the page to order # of tickets .. after 43 minutes to navigate 2 pages, just to have it lock up loading the page to enter the pertinent info .... and finally come up saying "cart is empty".  Fortunately, my festival cohort was able to get through on the phone and get a couple tix .. so .. I will make the 8th consecutive TBF.

  The network/server issues should not have occurred.  The load was anticipated and should have been modeled and requisite server capacity at least rented for the week.  This scenario is most likely going to play out the rest of the week for the other event sales.

Yes, we did end up getting tickets (via phone), however, there could have been more done by the IT department/folks to alleviate alot of unnecessary aggravations.

Have you guys read any other thread except this one today? Click below!

"The IT GUY" Bluegrass Brian put up a good fight trying to keep this from happening this year.

http://www.festivarian.com/index.php/topic,16979.0.html

Auntie Hope 

[meredith86]

A warm shout out to Joe Bue.  Thanks again for your offer, in the true spirit of sharing wonderful music with others.

What TBF should be!

[JoeBu]

A warm shout out to Joe Bue.  Thanks again for your offer, in the true spirit of sharing wonderful music with others.

What TBF should be!

'

I act like a tough guy on the internet sometimes (especially when I can't go to TBF!!!!)  , but I'm a real softie.  Glad you were able to get tickets!

Also, did anyone else missed the boat...or 2 boats as it were?

[ShatteredArm]

This is quite the disaster.  I know some people got theirs, but I spent almost an hour this morning trying, and got far enough to be told (incorrectly) that my billing address needed to be corrected.  Holiday passes sold out (despite the fact that I was on before 9:01), but I tried again with regular prices... No luck.

Had to go to meetings, and when I came back, it's completely sold out.

I know they tried to prevent this from happening this year, but the simple reality is, if you cannot control the amount of traffic to the server, you have to distribute functionality.  In this case, you direct the traffic to a different server, and only point people to the actual point of sale servers if you have the ability to handle the load.  This is how a queue works: you make everybody sit in a line (managed by a different server).  The free-for-all method of online sales doesn't work when you have such a limited supply.

Too bad.  It was a good three year run.  Sucks to miss the 40th, though.

[marv]

A warm shout out to Joe Bue.  Thanks again for your offer, in the true spirit of sharing wonderful music with others.

What TBF should be!

'

I act like a tough guy on the internet sometimes (especially when I can't go to TBF!!!!)  , but I'm a real softie.  Glad you were able to get tickets!

Also, did anyone else missed the boat...or 2 boats as it were?

Jesus, I like him very much, but he no help with curveball.

[Pilgrim99]

Well, I guess they can give us the whole lineup now. Holy Cow. Thanking my lucky stars I tried again after lunch instead of after work.

[Dr.Phil]

Good friends of ours that usually go missed out.  Hopefully they can get tickets in the spring if people return some.

[Althea Raine]

well we got tired of waiting. same thing with us, we would get tickets in cart then nothing. called the 800 number several times then said screw this. we called the local lyons number, spent exactly 15 minutes on hold, and still got the holiday price. i understand people are upset, but this should have been expected. and remember, the closer the festival gets, there are always face tickets on sale on craigslist or on this forum from people who suddenly can't go. it's a little early to vent so hard about passes. the last two years we didn;t decide to go untill the first of May. Last year was our honeymoon and we were able to get face 4 day passes and camping, and car passes also. all for face. and last year we also got all of the night grass tickets we wanted through various buys and trades. we got 4 yonders for face, traded two of them for peter rowan and so on. it's all  about getting creative. if you really want to go there are ways to do it without dealing with scalpers. thats the beauty of telluride. and its still early.

 Listening to: althea raine practicing guitar as only a 3 year old can

[RockyMtnGuy]

...and then you'll be on here complaining about the ridiculous convenience fees.

I wouldn't mind at all paying a 5-10 dollar convenience fee to secure the $15.00 cheaper holiday ticket price considering the fact that I started my transaction just after 9:00 am, around 9:35 finally got the page offering holiday price tickets, ordered 2 .. and then sat in limbo for over half an hour, just to come back with "empty cart" message.  Ended up with regular priced tickets (via phone), which I am grateful for, however, it doesn't negate the fact that I was "in the queue" long before holiday price tickets sold out and got screwed by the system.

  Kevin

[Hot Sugar]

Well, I guess they can give us the whole lineup now. Holy Cow. Thanking my lucky stars I tried again after lunch instead of after work.

I think Craig said the preliminary line up would be out on the 21st.

[FaceOnMars]

This is quite the disaster.  I know some people got theirs, but I spent almost an hour this morning trying, and got far enough to be told (incorrectly) that my billing address needed to be corrected.  Holiday passes sold out (despite the fact that I was on before 9:01), but I tried again with regular prices... No luck.

Had to go to meetings, and when I came back, it's completely sold out.

I know they tried to prevent this from happening this year, but the simple reality is, if you cannot control the amount of traffic to the server, you have to distribute functionality.  In this case, you direct the traffic to a different server, and only point people to the actual point of sale servers if you have the ability to handle the load.  This is how a queue works: you make everybody sit in a line (managed by a different server).  The free-for-all method of online sales doesn't work when you have such a limited supply.

Too bad.  It was a good three year run.  Sucks to miss the 40th, though.

Hopefully, something will shake loose for you!

I was thinking of your post this morning when I got shut out of tix for Furthur at the Ogden in Denver next Feb.    It is a very high demand event (approx 6,500 will be attending the 1st Bank shows the following three nights) with limited supply.   The Ogden is about 1,200 give or take ... and I'm sure the allotment for direct online ticket sales was in the neighborhood of 500 or so when you back out the presale from Monday and the direct Mail Order (here's another idea for TBF).

I knew it was going to be a tough ticket regardless, but have to admit the waiting room made me a little ancy.  It was restraining myself not to click the web browser's reload button for fear of losing my place in line in the waiting room ... it was kind of like having an itch that you can't scratch.  Eventually I made it into the "purchase area" at about 10:04 (4 minutes after), but couldn't pull up any tickets.  The purchase area also made it so that upon each unsuccessful attempt to pull up tickets, a splash screen would countdown from 3 seconds ... then you could click OK and try again.  In other words, there was both a waiting room and a means to "throttle" requests to the server in order to mitigate load.

Part of me really didn't like that "helpless feeling" of being in a waiting room and not being able to do anything, but I remembered your story and others who were moving in slow motion on the TBF servers only to be jilted for some oddball reason/error ... or simply didn't know the status of their request due to the server timing out on them in the final moments.    As much as I didn't like getting shut out via the waiting room, I think I'd prefer that over the slow motion roller coaster ride some of you went through on here.

The Ogden is hardly a big venue/operation, but they might be a an AEG venue ... since they were running ticketing via http://www.axs.com.  However, it's possible such ticketing systems can be "rented" once or twice a year ... if not developed in house vs. outsourcing entirely to Ticketmaster.  In other words, I don't believe it's an either keep it the way it is or become Ticketmaster situation.