Coldplay fans livid over ticket limit 'loophole'
Fans who couldn't get their hands on the band's concert tickets upset that others were able to buy more than allowed
Thousands of fans have been left empty-handed after failing to get tickets to Coldplay's sold-out concert on April 1.
Yet 32-year-old marketing manager Allison De Cruz managed to get 28.
How did she manage that when the the sales were limited to eight tickets per transaction?
That's the question more than 500 unhappy fans want answered.
They took to the Facebook page of concert organiser Live Nation Lushington to complain.
This was after the third batch of up to 14,000 tickets were snapped up within 90 minutes of going on sale on the Sports Hub Tix website yesterday.
The website had imposed a limit on the number of tickets each buyer could get, but some buyers managed to exploit a loophole in the system.
Miss De Cruz spent about an hour in the system and obtained 28 tickets from seven different transactions.
The avid Coldplay fan told The New Paper: "It's purely luck because I tried during the Citibank and Live Nation pre-sale, and it took a long time for me to get in. By the time I did, the tickets were all sold out.
"Yesterday, I logged in at 9.55am and when I refreshed the page at 10am, it took two minutes to load and I got into the system."
First, she got eight Category Two tickets for herself and her friends. Then, she hit the "back" key and managed to get into the page again.
She repeated the process and helped her other friends get tickets.
"After trying hard at the pre-sales and getting nothing at all, I actually felt pretty lucky," she said.
"But I understand the disappointment of unlucky fans, especially when they were stuck on the 'waiting page' or were notified that the tickets were unavailable after choosing them. Or even worse, they got an error message at the checkout page.
"All these happened to me during the two pre-sale days. It was very frustrating."
A Singapore Sports Hub spokesman said demand for Coldplay concert tickets was the highest they had seen for a National Stadium concert so far.
SOLD
Live Nation Lushington said in a press release that more than 40,000 tickets have been sold.
The National Stadium has a seating capacity of 55,000.
It said that the two pre-sales sessions last week - for Citibank cardholders and subscribers to the Live Nation Lushington mailing list - and yesterday's public sale saw a "never-seen-before response".
"The Sports Hub Tix hotline and website had close to 20,000 unique users trying to dial in or access the ticketing site," it said.
"Within 10 minutes of the public sale, all ticket inventory had either been snapped up or held in the online shopping carts while the customers completed their payment transactions."
This was why thousands in the queue system were left waiting for the release of uncompleted purchases.
One of them, 50-year-old executive administrator Sheela Devi, spent over two hours on the Sports Hub ticketing site yesterday.
The long-time fan of Coldplay told TNP: "I was put on hold on the 'waiting page' on the website for very long, so I gave up waiting online.
"I intended to leave work to go to SingPost to get the tickets over the counter."
She was uncertain if she could get into the website because there was no indication of how far she was in the online queue.
"The moment I got on the bus, I saw Live Nation's Facebook post announcing that all the tickets had been sold out," she said.
"I was devastated."
Then she heard that others had managed to buy a large number of tickets.
"Of course it's unfair because they could get in and buy so many tickets while others had to go through all means and yet were still unable to get any," said Mrs Sheela.
"Sports Hub Tix should fix this loophole."
But there is still a chance for fans to get tickets to the highly-anticipated concert.
Live Nation Lushington said it would continue to explore all avenues to try and maximise the capacity at the stadium.
This will be announced on its official website, Facebook page and Sports Hub ticketing site.
Mrs Sheela, who wanted to get the tickets for her son, her friend and herself, said: "I'm taking leave tomorrow in case it announces the sale of extra tickets. I want to make sure I can get them."
Organiser have voided tickets found on resale market
Some Coldplay tickets on Viagogo are being sold at more than 50 times the original price.
A Standing Pen A ticket, originally priced at $228, is going at a staggering $13,000. It was still unsold at press time last night.
Tickets sold through Sports Hub Tix cost between $78 and $298.
Live Nation Lushington told The New Paper that it would reach out to all reselling platforms, identify the resellers and void those tickets.
In a Facebook post, the concert organiser announced that it had "voided a number of tickets found on the resale market as this contravenes our term and conditions of sale".
It urged fans not to buy tickets from unauthorised sellers.
Student Darian Hidajat, 20, waited for four hours on the Sports Hub Tix website yesterday but could not get any tickets.
He told TNP: "I felt very sad when I saw that it was sold out. I guess there are just too many Coldplay fans around."
But when he saw people reselling the tickets on platforms such as Viagogo and Carousell, he was even more upset.
"These 'fans' are not what they turn out to be. It's really unfair to those who genuinely want to watch the concert," he said.
"What makes me angrier is that there are people buying the resale tickets at crazy prices."
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