FIRST! and this is ridiculous. You will lose your place in line, on a computer server? Is this just their way of saying that something that is loading will have to start over if you refresh?

Posted by: Alcas at June 6, 2006 08:27 AM

I suspect that the web site can only process a certain number of requests at a time and they can't give you an exact time because they don't know how long it will be until one of the people who are presently purchasing tickets will be done.(That was how the wait time was explaned to me on my college's electronic report-card retrival site)

Alternatly the gerbals may be on a coffee break.

P.S. Broken, at the very least they should tell you why you are waiting

Posted by: Sean P at June 6, 2006 09:55 AM

"You will lose your place in line, on a computer server? Is this just their way of saying that something that is loading will have to start over if you refresh?"

What? No! You really will lose your place in line. They HAVE to do this with ticket sales, since the sale of every single seat affects the options of the next customer.

At this point in the process you have actually picked SPECIFIC seats, and those are linkied to your session. If you refresh, you really do lose your connection to those seats. The next person in line will have access to them.

I think everyone is underestimating the complexity of the process of numbered-seat ticket sales.

Posted by: DaveC426913 at June 6, 2006 11:14 AM

I believe Ticketmaster (and others) also ration access to the server to not overly favor Internet sales.

Think about it: the box office can serve maybe 4 people at a time.

The call center maybe 100 people at a time.

The web server, in theory: 10000+ people at a time.

If you have a concert for which there are only 20000 seats, the phone callers would be disappointed if it sold out in 5 minutes over the Internet with only 100 tickets going to phone callers.

Posted by: posedge clk at June 6, 2006 12:12 PM

I think that DaveC and posedge have pieces of it but this still seems weird. Maybe part of their system is down and they really don't know how long it will take.

But I don't think fairness or disappointment for certain classes of purchasers factor into it. About a year ago I did the traditional stand-in-line-in-the-rain-for-about-an-hour to get Rolling Stones tickets. The tickets available at the live (Ticketmaster) location sold out in about 11 minutes while I was still in line. Went home disappointed. Got onto the internet much later in the day and was astonished to find tickets still available on, yes, the Ticketmaster website. They were pretty good seats, too.

It would be interesting to know where the OP was in the process when this message occurred. Once I locked my tickets for purchase it put me on something like a two minute time limit to enter my credit card info. But this message sounds like the OP was just waiting in line to begin the process.

Posted by: Pat at June 6, 2006 02:59 PM

OK, I'll say it. 'Not Broken' basically because ticketmaster is practically a monopoly, and they can pretty much do any damn thing they want to. You don't like it, too bad, buy your tickets from scalpers or wait at the box office.

When competition comes in, quality of service goes up. Thats it.

Posted by: 4 out of 5 dentists at June 6, 2006 03:47 PM

It hasn't been noticed yet I don't think but if you read the bottom of the photo it says it will refresh itself to give you an approx. waiting time and if your tickets available. You'll lose your spot (even though thats almost impossible).

Posted by: Kurt at June 6, 2006 07:04 PM

It hasn't been noticed yet I don't think but if you read the bottom of the photo it says it will refresh itself to give you an approx. waiting time and if your tickets available. You'll lose your spot (even though thats impossible).

Posted by: Kurt at June 6, 2006 07:05 PM

I like wide posts.

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Posted by: WiderWide at June 6, 2006 10:15 PM

Dave and Posedge -- Sorry for my ignorance of the system. In view of the information you've brought up, I have to revise my opinion to not broken.

Posted by: Alcas at June 7, 2006 08:27 AM

I used to write systems like this. what you usually do is something along those lines:

- provide some kind of way for the customer to select currently free seats

- reserve them for five minutes after he selected them

- let him enter all his other stuff - credit card number and such

- if he abandons the process or doesn't enter his data withing 5 minutes, the seats will free up again

there's no waiting involved, unless all free seats are currently in a transaction.

Posted by: broken! at June 9, 2006 03:32 AM

This is broken because there are ways to put somebody in a line that other websites already use where refreshing the page does not make you lose your place. Check out Fileplanet in IE.

Posted by: Yaos at June 10, 2006 05:06 AM

widerwide is a dumbass

Posted by: Jeff at June 25, 2006 06:20 PM