Ok I think I went through ALL the scenarios. This is my saga of trying to get tickets through NPGMC for the New York show. If any of these happen to you, keep trying until you get to the final step:

1. Server time-out... kept trying

2. Got to the page to enter credit card info and clicked "continue check out"... server time-out... kept trying

3. Completed check out and got "Ur order has already been processed."

Ok, here's where I took a breather, thinking everything was cool. BUT FOLKS DON'T STOP HERE!!! If you do not get a confirmation number, your purchase did NOT HAPPEN!!!

4. After going back and forth on the site trying to refresh pages and get a confirmation number, I got an error message indicating that my credit card was rejected.

This happened to at least two other people trying to purchase tickets. After checking with my card company, they said that THEY did not reject any purchases and in fact no purchases had been attempted according to them. So this appears to be another glitch in the NPGMC retail site.

Okay, so I decide to try it all again.

5. Finally went through the whole process again, re-entering credit card info and GOT A CONFIRMATION NUMBER! Woo-hoo so I'm very happy thinking I got the ticket, right?...

WRONG. After seeing that I got no confirmation email, I double checked "UR HISTORY" for that confirmation number, and lo and behold, it says:

"Order Detail 4 Brian Wolosky" and gives the address, etc.

[I should probably state here that I am NOT Brian Wolosky!!!]

Okay I will put up with all the server overloads, site crashes, but when I am accessing other people's order history that is just plain ROACH. Unprofessional. A breach of security.

So I called my credit card and NOTHING. So I decided to do it all again, after deleting history, deleting cookies, etc.

5. Went through all the steps. Got a DIFFERENT confirmation number. Double-checked it through the "Order history" and this time it says MY NAME, AND got an email.

So to recap, if you do not have the following, you should not consider your purchase complete:

1. A unique confirmation number (a simple "Ur order has already been processed" is insufficient.
2. A listing in YOUR order history with YOUR NAME (a mere confirmation number could belong to SOMEONE ELSE)
3. An email confirming your purchase.

Phew, how about that? I dunno, is this the cyber version to camping out the night before to buy tickets???

Good luck folks!

--NPS