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It pissed off The Boss, drew immediate congressional ire and generally made Ticketmaster even more … unappreciated. But CEO Barry Diller says that business about diverting customers to higher-priced Bruce Springsteen concert tickets was the result of an innocent, little computer glitch. Not even his. Also, there’s nothing to see here.
Diller, taking time out of a press conference touting the Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger to address the backlash, said the fault lay with Visa’s credit card processing.
"What really happened was that there was an actual glitch — a
little tech glitch in the system that had nothing to do with the
availability of tickets," said Diller. "It had to do with, I think
it was, Visa that couldn’t process the data, so it kind of froze the
system for a bit."
The
situation was confusing, he said, but "there was no real controversy."
Small consolation to hordes of Springsteen fans who, on the morning of Feb. 2, faced the all-too-familiar "Sold Out" sign on Ticketmaster.com as tickets to concerts at venues across the country were said to be all gone seemingly milliseconds after they went on sale. Buyers were were told to try again or proceed to Ticketmaster’s sister company,
TicketsNow, to purchase tickets. At that secondary-market auction site prices per seat ranged in the
hundreds of dollars and ran as high as $2,000 — a far cry from the
original $95 (plus
fees) asking price.
Springsteen apologized for the situation, which he called a "bait and switch." Sen. Charles Schumer, (D-New York) and Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-New Jersey) have asked stern questions of Ticketmaster. Some fans are joining a class action suit.
The timing could not have been worse, given the almost certain
anti-trust scrutiny the combination will be subjected to — to say
nothing of the love-hate relationship its customer already have with it. But Diller remained philosophical.
"That’s what happens in life, where you’re just getting ready to
finish a transaction and then up comes a computer glitch that gets, uh,
‘promoted,’ let’s say," he said.
(Photo: jdlasica)
Source: Eliot Van Buskirk
