As some maybe aware I am in the prosess of trying to organise a official watch dog/practicing standards comittee for live events

As you would imagine, this will be a very long and difficult task so please do be patiant.

In the mean time If you feel that you have been unfairly treated at the Prince concerts or at any other event Please feel free send me a short letter about what happend.
Please try to include EVENT NAME, DATE, VENUE, AND PROMOTER IF KNOWN, ASWELL AS HOW YOU PURCHASED YOUR TICKETS

Hopefully in the next month or so I will try to set up a website. More details will follow
Kevos

kevos said:

Unfairly treated is only the half of it!! I paid the humongous amount of £30 for my ticket and when I got to my seat I found I only had two foot of leg room....I was expecting at least 2.3 foot, so imagine my dismay! Needless to say I burnt all my Prince CDs and am now petitioning AEG and Ticketmaster until I get what I rightly deserve or some sort of American style compensation instead.

my complaints are
purchasing tickets on ticketmaster on the first day of sale and recieving upper tier as best availble only to find them selling floor and lower tier seats nearer to the event date.
my 3 vip experiences were appaling...the seats were good but the buffett were terrible and only 3 free alcoholic drinks!also one of my vip nights was in a different lounge where the food was plentiful and they played prince but the other two were in a quiet lounge with no music and pathetic attempts at canopes.as for the aftershows..i understand p may not show..i dont mind that at all but the dj could at least have played prince music!!3121?i'd rather have paid a fiver to go to flares or 80's night at the pheonix club!

oh and one more complaint..i had vip ticks for sat 11th aug as did a group of my friends but when we handed them over they refused to scan them or let us in the venue because they said the pic of prince was different to what tthey were expecting to see so we had to wait until someone would scan them...no one would explain or help us out at the time,no apology no explanation for why they wouldnt scan them.eventualy they did scan hem and guess what?...they were fine!

cammille said:

I would also complain about the way the tickets were released, it was nothing short of scandalous. Fortunately I managed to sell my uppers to a friend of my brother and got myself lowers. Not only did I get my money back but my brothers mate was delighted as he couldn't get tickets himself. Strange really as lower tiers were still on sale when he parted with his cash.

I haven't been burned by any of the bad deals particularly, but I feel for those who have. For me, the main issues, be it legal or ethical, were:

1.The gigs were promoted with a pre-sale for 02 customers. This presale excluded the opportunity to buy tickets in certain key blocks, namely 111, 102 and floor seats. This information was not made available prior to the sale, and in a panic, many fans bought lesser seats, unaware that better ones would be available to the general public only a day later.

2.The introduction of lower tier VIP seating, AFTER the sales had already opened, previously stating that the sale was for the very best seats in the first 10 rows of the floor.

3.The auction of front row seats AFTER the sale of VIP tickets offering the "very best seats".

4.The content of the "VIP" package not being of "satisfactory quality".

5.The sale of aftershow tickets in the "Prince" and "concert" sections of the Ticketmaster website.

6.The failure to provide adequate customer responses when no aftershow was provided.

7.The addition of the "Prince may not be in attendance" statement many weeks AFTER the tickets had gone on sale.

8.The content of the Aftershow not being of "satisfactory quality" (Where Prince did not perform).

9.The deliberate release of poorer upper tier tickets before the release of lower tier tickets in the main arena.

10.The late release of "new seats" the weekend of the album release.

11.Ticketmaster not letting fans upgrade when they found out better seats were available.

12.Some VIP seats not being classed as restricted view.

SquirrelMeat said:

And don't forget NPG fan club members who were offered tickets, many of whom purchased, and turned out to be the worst seats in the house (i.e. restricted view). I purchased four tickets for two nights using the fan club code. The first two tickets were for 10th August which I argued with O2 customer services to get changed as I refused to sit in block F1 and the second two which are for Thursday 6th September I've given to my brother as I can't face another argument trying to get them changed and I don't want to look at the back of the stage hoping that Prince will come round the back of the O so that I can see him. I'd really rather not bother. So all in all, fan club tickets a total disappointment when I would have assumed it would have been the other way around and we would have been offered something at least half decent.

DoMeBaby69 said:

I forgot about that one.

I got lucky, my code never came through! Otherwise I probably would have bought loads.

Another issue too....After the VIP sale, Hotel package deals became available including gold circle seats, at less than half the cost of the VIP seats.

SquirrelMeat said:

Yeah, that's really disgusting isn't it. I guess I got off quite lucky considering, although I still do have issues with the general seat allocation as I also bought tickets on the first day of sale and couldn't believe when further better tickets were released some weeks later. Madness. But if I was one of those who had bought a VIP package for a seat (in the first ten rows) and then found that tickets within the first ten rows were sold for £31.21 at a later date I'd be absolutely spitting blood.

cammille said:

Exactly! And on a more personal note: Upon entering the Indigo the code on the tickets gave an error. I had to cue at the box office to receive new ones, which took about ten minutes. While being early in line for the, skipping the second encore of the main show, we ended up entering the Indigo late.

Had a blast anyway! Security, ticket box and personnel all seemed really professional. O2 is gorgeous!

DaveT said:

Yeah? You think you have it bad....listen to this...on the night that I went, I forgot to put on hair gel! You would have thought that those scumbags would have emailed us on the day to remind us...but oh no! Got to the arena and wondered why my hair was dry.

When I got home as well as a bonfire, I hired a hypnotist to train me to only like music played on Steve Wrights Sunday Love Songs on Radio2.

barbarella3000 said:

SquirrelMeat said:

And they're still selling F block seats as VIP. I just looked on Ticketmaster to see what was available and they're selling VIP packages on 21st September for £235 per ticket for seats in Row C, Block F2. Now surely by now SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE must have noticed that F1, F2 and F3 particularly have restricted views, with F2 probably being the worst of the three. And yet they are still selling them as VIP seats. Why? It's just all wrong.

I like a moan. I knew the risk but.

Day of 1st sell I bought VIP Opening night Block E1 worst seat. Crap
And some ridiculas seat for the 14th aug BLK 400 SOMEWHERE
(Best available my ass). Seat allocated last miniutefor VIP. The law states you must allocate seat when ticket is sold. Look on google.

Vip was good seat rubbish I thought these things would have been the other way round

bout Two weeks ago I bought

14 aug D1 N £31.21
24 aug B1 F £31.21
6 sept C2 C £31.21
21 sept A1 J £31.21

TOTAL Fuck all for what I paid for the vip on the 1st bout £120 half price.

You know I hate moaning but come on that sucks ha

levis1 said:

you know what let me say it for you.."FUK the 02"
[Edited 8/30/07 13:14pm]

Reading your points has really hacked me off. How did you find out that certain blocks were excluded from the pre-sale.

I brought one ticket with the O2 code and tickets for another two shows when they first went on sale, one ticket was in the Upper tier and the other was round the back of the stage. On reading the other posts it seems as though I was not the only one who was caught out. Is it so unreasonable to expect that if you get your tickets on the first day they go on sale that you really are given the best available. If this is how Ticketmaster or AEG organise ticket sales I will try and avoid them in future,

SquirrelMeat said:

barbarella3000 said:

That's disgusting that is...what is the world coming to!!!!! Surely its not too much to ask for a personal phonecall from Prince to remind us to use hair gel....!!!