A sampling, screenshotted for posterity:
We reached out to the Q to see just what happened. Demand was super insane — Garth doesn’t play that often, after all — and two shows were added mere minutes after the first show went on sale. Chalk it up to demand and maybe a short-sighted view of how many people would be dinging the site. Here’s what a spokesman had to say:
“The issue some fans experienced today was related to the timed checkout process with some sessions timing out before fans had completed their ticket purchase. Veritix resolved this by more than doubling the regular check out timing limit, while the addition of two more shows and the associated increase in seating inventory also helped alleviate the issue.”
Hope everyone who wanted tickets ended up getting them.
This article appears in Aug 19-25, 2015.
I had 6 tickets at 10:04am. Timed out and ended up spending $277.50 for 2 nosebleed seats.
Lost floor tickets and ended up with some that weren’t nearly as good. Didn’t get the show we had hoped for either. We called and the representative was basically like too bad sucks for you.
I’ve been through this same kind of online hell for other performers.
It just isn’t worth the hassle.
Fuck this kind of ticket-buying noise.
Never again. Not even for Steely Dan!
Chuckles the Clown
Got timed out three times to get crappy seats and got stuck with the 1030pm show not the original 730 show we had tickets for before it timed out & I’ll be 8 months pregnant 🙁 it’s going to be miserable more than enjoyable …. Epic fail on the q’s part! Very very disappointed so much for a nice birthday!
Timed out on me 2x’s after entering all my credit card info and clicked to submit order. Retried and ended up with ticks to 1030 show without realizing it.
Fans will probably view tickets they were within seconds of acquiring – before the technology failure – on those pesky online ticket resale sites…….that somehow scoop up thousands of prime tickets without a hitch.
If you had paid attention to what the people at the Q TOLD EVERYONE TO DO if they wanted tickets and 1. Had your account set up PRIOR to the on-sale.
2. Been in line at 9am.
Also, part of having the account properly set up was to have your credit card info ON FILE.
This way it literally took 5 seconds to checkout, and almost all issue people had seem to be part of timing out. The timers were set to 2 minutes. That was to ensure that people didn’t sit on tickets for 10 minutes to make sure someone that was not in line got good seats.
As I type this, there are still tickets available for both Friday shows and the 10:30 Saturday.
There are seats available on those resale sites. However, as part of the agreement with Mr. Brooks, The Q’s Flashseats ticket marketplace has been excluded as a resale venue, therefore the Q had no dog in that hunt.
I also don’t, as I do not like country music, but I get all of the Q emails.
Every city that he has played has had some kind of issue like this, it is what happens when 80,000 people want to go see a show and they put all of the tickets on sale at once.
I had everything set up prior, have a card on file since I purchase many tickets throughout the year via flash seats and I still was booted 5 times. Lost great seats up close. Finally I was able to get in but in the upper level. Stinks that I lost my chance to be up close due to problems on there end.
Bullshit Dude. I’m not mad, but I was on at 9am and had an updated account. (Double checked the night before) Had 8th row floor seats, signed in, credit card number showed, but the rest of the info wouldn’t load before the page timed out. Page timed out and told me I already had tickets in my cart. “I was like no shit.” Ended up with section 108. It happens, but Dude don’t assume people aren’t following instructions.
I had the same issues. Had all my accounts set up and logged in and waited in the queue just to lose seats twice. The site traffic was so heave that the 2 minutes they gave you wasn’t enough. I ended up in section 100 which doesn’t look to bad but had better seats a couple of other times before timing out
I also had everything set up prior to purchasing. Waited in the queue, got my tickets and put in my info, then crash. Did this 4 more times and on the 4th and 5th time it told me I had 8 minutes to enter my info and BOTH times before I finished entering my info it said “session timed out”. Even though I should have had at least 6 or 7 minutes left on this clock. Don’t tell me the system fixed itself by adding more time. It still failed. Epic fail Quicken Loans.
“If you had paid attention to what the people at the Q TOLD EVERYONE TO DO if they wanted tickets and 1. Had your account set up PRIOR to the on-sale. 2. Been in line at 9am. Also, part of having the account properly set up was to have your credit card info ON FILE.”
—‘The Dude Abides’ obviously has no idea what he is talking about and wasn’t part of this horrible experience. Those of us that were in line at 9AM (or before) with our accounts already setup had the same issue. ISP was not the problem either. The problem was with FlashSeats/TheQ’s servers.
“This way it literally took 5 seconds to checkout, and almost all issue people had seem to be part of timing out. The timers were set to 2 minutes.”
—Their servers couldn’t handle the traffic. Nothing “literally took 5 seconds” during this process. Once we had our tickets in the cart, we continued to the checkout screen. After we selected our SAVED credit card info, it could take up to a minute to auto-populate our billing/shipping info. Then we had to enter the security code and a phone number. Then we’d click continue. It would process for 5-10 minutes and then give one of two error/expiration alerts. I went through this process at least 10 times. I had floor seats in my cart twice! I had lower level seats several times.
—Like The Dude mentions later in his post, there is a high demand for these tickets. Seems like EVERYONE is aware of this except for The Q and FlashSeats. They should have been prepared for the traffic! They didn’t make any adjustments on their end until almost 11AM.
“As I type this, there are still tickets available for both Friday shows and the 10:30 Saturday.”
—Some of us that “purchased” floor seats don’t really feel like sitting in the rafters now.
“Every city that he has played has had some kind of issue like this, it is what happens when 80,000 people want to go see a show and they put all of the tickets on sale at once.”
—Wrong again. I easily bought EIGHT lower level tickets in Chicago. No traffic issues at all.
I waited in the ‘queue’ line like a good girl for an hour ahead of the box office opening and got in, selected fairly good seats 3 times and each time I tried to pay I was kicked out and had to start all over – I did finally get tickets the 4th time but they are crappy at the very top of the arena – I hope that there is nothing blocking our view!! Very bad experience. Never had such trouble.