i am glad some people have got something back ...i havent gotten anywhere yet...have tried both aeg numbers but as soon as you say why you are phoning up about...they put me on to an answering machine ...so rude...

WELL MY COMPLAINT FINALLY GOT RESOLVED TO MY SATISFACTION.....THEY KNOW THE VIP EXPERIENCE WAS A JOKE SO IF ANYONE HASNT GOT WHAT THEY WANTED...KEEP TRYING...

lovecat. check your orgnotes. i have sent everything you need. best of luck and kindest regards. dave and shez.

WELL MY COMPLAINT FINALLY GOT RESOLVED TO MY SATISFACTION.....THEY KNOW THE VIP EXPERIENCE WAS A JOKE SO IF ANYONE HASNT GOT WHAT THEY WANTED...KEEP TRYING...

I love AEG they have just phone to give me 2 VIP packages for the last night 21st .They say they have improved the package WE WILL SEE

I love AEG they have just phone to give me 2 VIP packages for the last night 21st .They say they have improved the package WE WILL SEE

angel2020 said:

thats odd because i have been informed that although aeg could offer seats for 6th..9th..20th.. the chances of getting any ticket for the last night ie. the 21st were absolutely nill because they were all booked. have you genuinely been given tickets for the last night or is this a wind up.

it would seem that angel2020 is full of c@@p, telling everyone that they have tickets for the 21st. just another windup merchant by the look of things.

yodaferret said:

Maybe angel2020 is in fact one of the cronies from AEG trying to make out how great they are by offering non existant seats. Now everyone already knows the tickets for the 21st have already been allocated to ebay.

AEGSuck said:

Hi, completely agree with you. I've orgd angel2020 but so far no reply...

vdal said:

Hay do you think angel2020 could be Maxine from AEG when she called me the other week offering crap seats for th 20th, she did point out that she's been getting good feedback on the forums maybe that feedback is being written by herself, wouldn't put it past them to do something like that.

AEGSuck said:

ok, you just blew my mind. that would mean that I am maxine.

and that i wrote to complain about myself... so I could resolve it... to look good..



it's all gone a bit being john malkovitch..

yodaferret said:

I was offered seats for the 20th in block 402, don't know what gave them the impression I gave a shit about the VIP reception, I complained about getting crap seats in the first place so in turn they offered me even crapper seats to go with the VIP reception, makes no sense to me how the AEG people think.

AEGSuck said:

I was told that the VIP reception/tickets being offerred for 20/09 were a goodwill customer service gesture from AEG to people who felt they hadn't got good value for the original VIP they attended, I was told the tickets being offerred were all in the upper tiers, at the end of the day, it was AEG making an offer for another night to see Prince on them with VIP, they aren't the best seats, the VIP reception is much better, I think AEG are at least making an effort to do something for the fans shafted in the first place *while* the opportunity is there with Prince still at the O2.

If you don't want to go, refuse the offer and pursue a refund, I'm no apologist for AEG, I got shafted with my VIP package, but at least there doing something, Ticketmaster were just ignoring us and giving us crap about how its hard luck and these 'were the best seats available'.

I originally had 2 VIP tickets on th 11/08, AEG offerred me VIP for 31/08 which I was attending anyway, I said I already had 4 good tickets for block 106, which were better than upper tier, but I was going with another 2 friends, so they offerred to let all 4 of us into VIP, so I took that offer, we had a great time, not seen these friends for over a year since there down in Brighton and we're in Manchester, Maxine gave me loads of free tokens for the bar, we got 3 on bracelet and I was given another 20 while in VIP !!!

Was a good end to a dissapointing and frustrating experience.

What I learnt from all this is I will never buy any tickets without knowing block/seat/row number at the time of paying, as leaving in the hands of the promoter means your taking a huge risk.

I don;t think there's a chance AEG are/will give out any 'goodwill' tickets for 21/09.

vdal said:

Hay do you think angel2020 could be Maxine from AEG when she called me the other week offering crap seats for th 20th, she did point out that she's been getting good feedback on the forums maybe that feedback is being written by herself, wouldn't put it past them to do something like that.

AEGSuck said:

I was told that the VIP reception/tickets being offerred for 20/09 were a goodwill customer service gesture from AEG to people who felt they hadn't got good value for the original VIP they attended, I was told the tickets being offerred were all in the upper tiers, at the end of the day, it was AEG making an offer for another night to see Prince on them with VIP, they aren't the best seats, the VIP reception is much better, I think AEG are at least making an effort to do something for the fans shafted in the first place *while* the opportunity is there with Prince still at the O2.

If you don't want to go, refuse the offer and pursue a refund, I'm no apologist for AEG, I got shafted with my VIP package, but at least there doing something, Ticketmaster were just ignoring us and giving us crap about how its hard luck and these 'were the best seats available'.

I originally had 2 VIP tickets on th 11/08, AEG offerred me VIP for 31/08 which I was attending anyway, I said I already had 4 good tickets for block 106, which were better than upper tier, but I was going with another 2 friends, so they offerred to let all 4 of us into VIP, so I took that offer, we had a great time, not seen these friends for over a year since there down in Brighton and we're in Manchester, Maxine gave me loads of free tokens for the bar, we got 3 on bracelet and I was given another 20 while in VIP !!!

Was a good end to a dissapointing and frustrating experience.

What I learnt from all this is I will never buy any tickets without knowing block/seat/row number at the time of paying, as leaving in the hands of the promoter means your taking a huge risk.

I don;t think there's a chance AEG are/will give out any 'goodwill' tickets for 21/09.

ecnirp98 said:

It really amazes me how you guys can praise AEG all of a sudden and clearly blame ticketmaster, for something that they had no control over. AEG are fully liable and responsible for the way tickets are distributed and fully responsible for the fiasco that was the VIP reception. I'm no legal eagle but have it on full authority from my credit card company and consumer directthat AEG as the promoter are responsible and not Ticketmaster. It's nice to know that some of you wealthier fans out there are willing to settle for a few extra drinks vouchers and a smiling face and still end up watching Prince's ass for the whole performance.

My Experience of o2 pre-sale and VIP sent to Fivelive:

Well it seems so long ago when the news came out about '21 Nights in London', and my desperate scramble in early May to find a friend with an o2 contract phone so I could pinch the pre-sale booking priority code. After countless emails and phone calls I tracked down a friend who had one - my Prince adventure had just begun.

That infamous Thursday morning arrived, and I had a 9.30 meeting in Wimbledon. There I was at 8.50am sat on the train, Laptop on my lap and wireless data card plugged in and ready to roll. 9 am arrived and "bam!" I was in Ticketmaster and waiting for that 5 minutes ticker to roll down to see what glorious pre-sale tickets I could get my hands on for Friday August 10th, the day after my girlfriend's 28th birthday - she is also a mad Prince fan. After losing my wireless connection going through a couple of tunnels, I finally got through to some tickets at 9.20am as my train pulled in. Laptop in hand I fumbled around getting off the train and sat on the platform. Upper Tier Block 404??? What!! Surely this must be the biggest scramble for Prince tickets in history. Damn - if it's that busy and I can't even get a lower tier, let alone floor seat, I'd best settle for less and get them.

That night I revealed the news to my girlfriend that the best tickets at 9am seemed to be crappy upper tier - she was knocked for six, and had been so looking forward to the 'up close' experience of the One Nite Alone tour we shared 3 times late in 2002. That night, while pondering options and surfing eBay I came across a thread on Housequake mentioning VIP tickets - my chance to redeem myself!

So that very night, still before tickets went on general sale, I bought 2 VIP tickets for Friday August 10th at £235 pound a pop – at the time I booked them there were very little details, and I was expecting something truly amazing for the price. As with many loyal fams my reason was not purely to have a ‘VIP’ experience, but simply because of the deceitful communications coming out of the Prince and AEG camps that Prince (an artist who only shifted 80,000 copies of his last album in the UK) has somehow shifted 300,000 tickets in the single opening day of sales (“first 15 shows sold out” we were told, and how stupid we were to get duped). I blame myself really having followed Prince like a puppy dog for 18 years – I should have known better, considering his waning popularity in the UK, that he could have never have achieved such a feet. Anyway, I digress – the 2 tickets were the only chance (it appeared) to see him up close and personal, and who knows what else for such a extravagant sum – I was totally psyched about the whole experience (if less so about the credit card bill).

Anyway, I eagerly awaited the initial reviews of the VIP packages from the first few concerts in anticipation of my own – but all was not well. Initial rumours suggested that what was advertised as a ‘free-bar, food and entertainment’ was in fact 4 drinks and a few nibbles! Well, to be honest I can’t imagine I’d get more than a few beers in anyway, especially if I wanted to remember the show. Then it seemed that apart from the ‘seats in the first 10 rows’ advantage, that was all the VIP package provided. No ‘goody-bags’, no sound-check preview (which used to be a standard offering for the NPG Music Club members a few years back, and then we only had to pay a mere fraction of the price - $92 and $34 if I recall).

I must admit it had my suspicions aroused when I received my tickets through a couple of weeks before the event – a ‘shoddy’ un-personalised wonky photocopied letter was all that accompanied my tickets, confirming the ‘plastic bottles of pop and a sausage-roll’ concerns I had previously been informed of.

Anyway, forwarding to the night itself – we queued up at Entrance H (well, some barriers 300 yards down the walkway), but were eventually allowed to make the march up to the doors just the 20 minutes after the advertised opening time (nothing like letting us make the most of our “couple of hours” VIP), but at least it meant I could more easily spread the consumption of those drinks and nibbles to fill the time before the show started.

My most enduring memory of the VIP lounge was ‘how different’ it appeared to the ‘chicken-in-a-bucket’ self service motorway style lounge I had earlier noticed at Entrance B – thank god we got the swish lounge at the back, even if it did take 15 minutes up the escalators and along never ending corridors to find the place. £235 per person for self-service road-stop café is hardly the things dreams are made of…..but we were the lucky ones. Next I became acutely aware that of the ‘hundred or so’ so-called VIP’s in the room, our tables seemed to be the only ones being served ‘nibbles’ – more than once we had to offer our food up to those staring longingly across in the hope that maybe the serving staff had not forgotten them – unfortunately they had.

After making some wonderful acquaintances it was then time for the show, so we waited for our ‘escort to our seats’ which seemed obligatory for such an extravagantly priced experience. “Come this way sir – you need to go back down where you came from” – ah, that 15 minute walk – “…then go up some more escalators to block 106 and 107 where you can get access to your floor seats……right, bugger off now” – well, in not so many words! Oh, so basically we had traipsed all this way for a few plastic beers and some sausages on sticks only to be told we had to go back all the way round and enter with all the other concert-goers…..and there was only 10 minutes until kick off!

Well, we made it round in time, took our seats, surprisingly next to a Dutch couple who were sat “in front” of us and had paid face value for their tickets – strange, I would have thought these seats were just for us ‘special types’! Well, I had already heard that subject to poor sales, and incredulous selling and marketing techniques, AEG and Ticketmaster had begun selling the same seats we had spent £470 on for £31.21 each, as we were now all acutely aware, all the best seats ‘were not’ sold on the opening day, and in fact you could get ‘better’ seats than ours through Ticketmaster for face value only days before the event.

Anyway, we found ourselves stuck up close to a 6 foot high stage, and could barely see the ‘Purple One’ during any of the show, as he is not the tallest of chaps you know. Coupled with the fact that the sound where we were standing (at the side) was ‘appalling’, it really did not make either of us feel like ‘very important people’. At one point Prince made his way directly over to our side, and was stood ripping up a guitar solo only feet from our seats – the only problem was that we couldn’t hear a note, as the speakers in front of us intermittently cut out. He was playing the thing, but damned if we could hear any more than the feedback from the speakers in the roof! Oh, and not to mention they had shoved a smaller speaker on top of the bigger speakers in front of us, which made one section of our view completely obscured to Prince, the band, or any other person who may have been wearing stilts for all we could tell.

Of course, it was not all bad – but the next night we returned with similar floor seats for £31.21 each, and were rewarded with a much better view and incredible sound.

Prince and AEG Live should be ashamed of themselves! The true long-time followers who helped keep the career of this genius musician afloat had been well and truly screwed for a quick buck, and we ‘aint happy about it!

Yours ‘lighter in the pocket, but with memories which lay heavy of the heart of a dedicated Prince follower’
[Edited 8/22/07 15:05pm]
[Edited 8/22/07 15:09pm]

ecnirp98 said:

It really amazes me how you guys can praise AEG all of a sudden and clearly blame ticketmaster, for something that they had no control over. AEG are fully liable and responsible for the way tickets are distributed and fully responsible for the fiasco that was the VIP reception. I'm no legal eagle but have it on full authority from my credit card company and consumer directthat AEG as the promoter are responsible and not Ticketmaster. It's nice to know that some of you wealthier fans out there are willing to settle for a few extra drinks vouchers and a smiling face and still end up watching Prince's ass for the whole performance.

AEGSuck said:

it's very simple aegetc, firstly, i can complain about ticketmonster because, from a legal standpoint they are the ones that sold me the tickets, therefore, they are responsible. this is a fact. if you wish to check it out contact your local trading standards office. secondly ticketmonster stuck two fingers in the air and said tuff. (not literally of course) but you get my drift.they gave me aeg's number so fast you would'nt believe trying to pass the buck, thirdly ( or if you live in wolfy land, tirdly) aeg and their staff were so quick to apologise ( and yes that is the correct spelling for all you shermans out there.... bloody american spell checker ) and offer a very fair solution that you can't help but be impressed. in these days of cut throat business shinanigins it is most generous. many companies ( ? )would have stuck two fingers up at us and passed the buck. and lastly (cos the scrump is getting the better of me ) i was'nt aware that prince took an ass, burrow, donkey, on stage . if , however you are making reference to his arse, rump, bottom, posterior, then all i can say is, if i had an arse like that i would want the people at the back to see it too

any tips on getting aeg to act quickly with compensation - all i'm getting is answering machines and frankly i'd rather get ticks to another show than a refund - but there arent all that many left.....

any help'd be much appreciated