UPDATE: The Jonas Brothers Fan Club sent an email to members saying they will refund one membership if you buy the Team Jonas Bundle on Ticketmaster. This is great - and surprising - customer service. The email suggested waiting until after 3pm today to make your request to the fan club.
After enduring the fiasco that was securing face-value Hannah Montana tickets, I thought I knew what I was in for when ordering Jonas Brothers tickets for my daughter and I this morning. But apparently someone decided that the Jonas Brothers would do their fan club presales differently. And they took a broken system and broke it even more.
Instead of releasing the passcode ahead of time to fan club members, they decided to require fans to sign into the Jonas Brothers fan club site at the time of pre-sale in order to obtain the passcode.
But the Jonas Brothers site is not used to the kind of traffic that, say, Ticketmaster is.
So when it came time to release the passcode to the masses, the inevitable website issues arose. And wow, were they severe.
10:17 am I finally get to the passcode landing page. And when I got there it was blank.
I kept trying the page to no avail.
I’ve been trying to access the page via FF and IE to see if one browser was faster. But then I decide to close down to just one browser in case they had Ticketmaster-like rules about trying to access info via more than one browser (not allowed on Tmaster).
10:30 am ish I do a search on Tweetscan to see if anyone is tweeting about Jonas Brothers ticket problems. I click on a link from @sxypanda and get Rick Rolled. This completely hijacks my Firefox browser - all three windows and all of their tabs. I have to use Task Manager to shut them all down. I’m worried that I’ve lost some place in “line” on the Jonas Brothers site.
If I had only noticed that the tweet had been posted 5 hours later, I could have avoided the Rick Roll in the first place. (Don’t go to that TinyURL unless you’re in the mood for some serious Rick Astley!)
11am The Team Jonas Bundles go on sale on Ticketmaster. The bundle allows you to purchase a fan club membership and tickets at the same time. I assumed that tickets would get snatched up so I buy another fan club membership along with tickets.
I search multiple venues to see if and when Team Jonas brothers will sell out. Tickets seem to be widely available. Also, I could have gotten seats 2 rows closer. So much for “Best Available.” And so much for the need for all these secure measures.
12:12pm I finally reached a live pre-sale passcode landing page. I was denied the passcode due to reaching my pre-sale purchase limit, which allows just 1 pre-sale purchase city per tour, apparently.
This is potentially good news. If they can link my Ticketmaster account to my Jonas Brothers fan club account (via credit card matching), then hopefully I will only get charged for the one fan club membership.
On the flip side, the system could still be broken.
12:14pm I click through to view My Tickets. I get a page that announces the site is experiencing High Traffic. No kidding. Why didn’t they have this page available earlier? Better yet, why weren’t they better prepared for the madness?
12:40pm I’ve received multiple high traffic pages on my way to get back to my account information. I’m simply trying to confirm whether or not the Team Jonas Bundle was realized by JB Fan Club or if I could get the passcode and see if I can get better seats.
12:44pm Http 1.1 service unavailable error
12:56pm I’m finally back on the Jonas Bros Fan Club ticketing page again. Long time no see. I click my city in hopes to get the passcode.
1:04pm I’m rerouted back to the pre-sale landing page.
1:12pm I once again get a page informing me that I’ve exceeded my limit. This time I try clicking the passcode and details link (previously, I clicked the “My Tickets” link). I FINALLY HAVE THE PASSCODE. I enter it in Ticketmaster and am able to get tickets. But the ones I’ve already bought are better.
I’ll wait until later to see how accommodating the Fan Club will be in combining what is now 2 fan club memberships.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go order a Transformers birthday cake for my son.
One Comment
This isn’t the first time this sort of debacle has happened. Presales are a powerful tool in promoting events, but as you pointed out, they can go very, very badly for fanclubs and promoters that are not prepared.
I predict that the (regrettably) your complaints will fall on deaf ears.
Good luck though, and no, don’t expect them to automatically refund your second fanclub membership fee (won’t happen by itself).