The impossible task of exchanging for ADA tickets through Ticketmaster

Submitted by txskye20 t3_116nf6v in Music

I had surgery after I bought tickets to a show and expected to be recovered enough to not need a scooter at concerts. Well, there is more recovery time involved than anticipated, so I needed to exchange my tickets for accessible tickets so I could bring my scooter and not have to worry about being bumped. What ensued with ticket master was ridiculous.

Screenshots of my conversation with support.

I’m not convinced each new person could see the previous messages that were sent, but wow.

Fuck Ticketmaster

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Comments

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DrYoda t1_j97gzyd wrote

Looks like the issue is that you purchased General Admission tickets and are trying to exchange them for General Admission -Accessible tickets which don’t really exist. General Admission tickets just mean you have a ticket for the open floor, you don’t have a seat, they’re already accessible.

Not sure what venue you’re looking at but unless you want to sit in the balcony then you should be fine with your regular tickets.

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txskye20 OP t1_j97m527 wrote

They exist

There is a chance I could’ve shown up to the venue on my scooter and they would have guided me to that section anyway, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

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soytunano t1_j97nibw wrote

Anecdotal evidence but we’ve showed up to shows with GA tickets and newly obtained injuries and got accommodated by the crew. Only if it’s packed to balls they would probably have issues prioritizing who gets the seats

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2daMooon t1_j984jcj wrote

How sure are you that “GA” and “GA Wheelchair Accessible” are different things?

From the map, the list and my experience I think that the venue is saying that their GA is wheelchair accessible, not that they have a separate wheelchair accessible GA location.

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txskye20 OP t1_j98w7hq wrote

Most of the time larger venues like this will have a separate roped off area with chairs for an ADA section of sorts. Sometimes it’s nothing, but I’ve only noticed that at smaller venues. Another show I went to, you just had to go to the box office and request a wrist band, but those tickets weren’t through Ticketmaster. Was playing it on the safe side for this one since I haven’t been to this venue in a while

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2daMooon t1_j992p7e wrote

Nice, I’d suggest then avoiding this avenue of support and call direct. That was a crazy convo.

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iambluest t1_j97maod wrote

General admission except for assigned accessible seating

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Blinkth3dog t1_j97t0vn wrote

Why do we have humans helping computers help humans. Can we please just go back to humans?

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WhippedPistol t1_j97x7pg wrote

Because like 95% of peoples questions can be resolved by looking at keywords and giving predetermined responses or providing a path to a person who can help. Like this query should have sent the person to a support line with the ability to change tickets, but if the person wanted a refund that might be a different support staff. They work really well if they are used to answer 100% factual queries or like a fancy operator to connect the customer to a person.

You just need it to resolve, redirect or shortcut to a general help line quickly. Its when they get too fancy with the bots that problems occur.

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Blinkth3dog t1_j97xgb4 wrote

Except it really doesn't function that way or well. The automated websites/apps are just as useless as automated phonelines have been for the past two decades. The lack of nuance or context is detrimental and most people end up needing a real person anyways.

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WhippedPistol t1_j983f4l wrote

That's what I said. It isn't solving every problem. But a lot of times it's directing. I feel like people forget the days of 3 connecting calls before getting an answer. Having to explain at each point the problem before taking to a new person.

A good system directs to who can help. Unless the question is where can I find x on your site or what time is this place open. A lot of good systems seem like exactly that. "Hello how can I help you? Blah blah blah. Oh, that is taken care of by this department. Let me get someone in that dept for you so you can get this resolved as quickly as possible."

The system on our site has a greater than 80 percent ticket closing rate because most questions are things like how long does it usually take to ship an item. How do I change my email etc.

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Mimshot t1_j98oyy1 wrote

Ok so the software Ticketmaster uses called Archtics (and yes I know they wrote it themselves I’m not making excuses for them just explaining where in TM the disfunction really is) doesn’t actually sell GA tickets. There is no way to represent the concept of a section with 2000 fungible seats. They must each have a unique section and row. Selling non-contiguous seats is problematic so it can be a pain if not impossible to sell 2 tickets to a GA section with 10 tickets left if they’re all in different rows. Sometimes the box office can help by moving other people around or just processing multiple transactions, but it seems like TM’s BPO employees can’t, don’t know how, or are just unwilling to put in the effort to do that.

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