2009.05.30
Review: Keith Urban and Dierks Bentley at Roanoke Civic Center -- plus ticket troubles for fan club members
Keith Urban at Roanoke Civic Center. Eric Brady photo
Here's a link to the print review.
Now on to consumer matters:
Maybe you're heard the Frank Zappa song, "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow."
At Roanoke Civic Center on Friday night, the theme was: "Don't Buy The Green Tickets."
Markie Fenton and Suzi Glowaski did. They had traveled together from the Philadelphia area to catch Keith Urban on Friday -- one of 12 times they will see Urban this year, they said. They bought their tickets through a fan club promotion handled by Ticketmaster.com, which mailed them to Fenton and Glowaski.
But those tickets, bordered at one end by the color green, would not scan into the civic center's system. Fenton, Glowaski and at least 748 other people making their way through the long queues outside the building had prepaid -- they should've had no trouble getting inside.
Instead, they spent long minutes wondering whether they would even get their seats.
"Nobody cares -- that's the problem," Fenton said.
Fortunately for them, civic center staff did care. The staff figured out early what was going on, and employees were busier than a sack of cats getting fan club members' green-stub tickets, running them back to the box office, exchanging them for civic center tickets with the same seat listed and handing them back to the buyers.
Still, the snafu made plenty of people late for Dierks Bentley's opening set.
An exasperated Chris Connolly, who manages the venue for Global Spectrum, said that almost everyone was inside the auditorium before Bentley's set was over.
"We did the best we could do with the situation we had to deal with," Connolly said. "Ticketmaster screwed up."
The civic center works with Tickets.com, but made an exception for the Ticketmaster-dispensed fan club tickets, Connolly said. He expected that Ticketmaster would send the civic center a list of those who bought tickets through their site, for the venue to print out its own tickets and hold them at the will call booth. That's how it usually happened, he said.
"They made a mistake, because obviously, their tickets won't scan in our building," Connolly said.
Just as Connolly finished explaining the problem to me, a woman walked up with this opening line: "We are very upset ... So we're missing half the concert because we have to stand in line?"
He started in again on the explanation to the woman, Nina Goggin of Richmond, and her friend Nancy Pope of Norfolk, fan club members who had driven into Roanoke on Friday to see the show.
Urban alluded to the trouble during his set.
"I want to thank everyone that came a long way to get here tonight ... [people who] had to jump through a lot of hoops" he said from the stage.
Typical of the Civic Center to pass blame to someone else. Here's the key, they knew that the Ticketmaster tickets were sold. We have two hugely popular country music stations, could they not have put the word out for people to come and exchange tickets early? Chris Connolly should stop placing blame on the vendor and take some ownership in it. Why let people get to the door before telling them. He put his employees in a bad situation and they were the ones taking the abuse.
Comment by Jen — May 30, 2009 @ 8:49 am
In addition to the fan club ticket troubles, I purchased my tickets through the Roanoke Civic Center presale and was so excited to have front row in Riser 5. But to my dismay, upon arrival to the show, my seats did not exist. I was told to wait in the hall until seats could be found for us (my husband and two friends). We missed almost the whole opening performance from Dierks Bentley. Why wouldn't there be some sort of notification and/or at least replacement seats ready for us upon arrival? (ie someone standing by with the tickets for us when we walked to find that our seats did not exist) I am a huge music fan and give the Civic Center a lot of business. We were just very dissappointed in the service we DIDN'T receive.
Comment by Shelia Bennett — May 30, 2009 @ 12:15 pm
I don't know where the blame actually should be placed but one place it shouldn't be is on the fans. We traveled a good distance for that show and luckily I did make it in the venue on time for Dierks opening song but people I was with did not because of this problem and the fact that the employee gave them the WRONG tickets in the place of the ticketmaster ones. The other thing I am certain of is that with mistakes like this happening THEY HAVE NO BUSINESS CHARGING SUCH HIGH PROCESSING/HANDLING FEES to the consumer! That is just a slap in the face when you pay those kind of prices for someone to "handle" the tickets. It keeps getting higher and higher and meanwhile service just plain SUCKS!
Comment by ash1147 — May 30, 2009 @ 6:15 pm
Oh and by the way...it was obvious that they just stuck seats any and every where they could for this show sort of like an after thought. We were on the floor 14th row and the space that was available between rows had to be a joke! There wasn't room to change your mind much less positions sitting or standing. If you moved at all you couldn't help but hit the person next to you or in front of you depending on what angle you moved. Maybe they should have thought of this before they made the area in front of the stage like it was with the first 5 or so rows allowing a total of about 5 people per row!! How STUPID....how about having real seating before your next show and oh yeah...for go the service charges or think of refunding charges for the "fubar" you had this past weekend.
Comment by ash1147 — May 30, 2009 @ 11:44 pm
Had the Civic Center posted outside something about fanclub members needing to exchange tickets BEFORE they had already waited in line and got to door, things would have moved a lot quicker. I did not know my ticket wouldn't scan until I'd waited 45 minutes in line only to be told at the door I had to go wait 45 minutes in another line. I didn't pay $140 plus the added charges to stand in line and miss half of the opening act.
Comment by Noitpure — May 31, 2009 @ 8:21 pm
I am still FURIOUS about this entire situation. I drove 3 1/2 hours for this show. Unlike most people who were waiting in line to exchange their tickets, my 3 cousins and I paid $84 apiece to see DIERKS BENTLEY NOT KEITH URBAN. We missed half of Dierks' performance and no one even really offered to apologize. The least they could have done was hold off the start of the show until more fans could get inside. What's the point in buying presale FanClub tickets if you're going to miss most of what you came to see? There were still hundreds of people standing outside when we finally got through the door. We had waited in another line for about 15 minutes when we were told that we'd have to go exchange our tickets. So we had to go stand in another line and wait another 30 minutes or so. When we finally got inside the door, I already heard Dierks singing and I was on the verge of tears. The second half of his performance was great and Keith Urban's set was good as well, but I can't believe I had to miss the first half of my favorite's performance because the Roanoke Civic Center doesn't deal with ticketmaster!
Comment by Shenna Edwards — June 1, 2009 @ 11:47 am
this whole tour is a nightmare. from ticket presale and on sale dates constantly advertised wrong, tickets not being available at all during presales and some general sales, tickets being found to be useless and ppl missing out on opening acts, seats not existing, all the way to people who have seats and can't use them or even stand near them because the floor is a free for all allowing anyone who has the balls to think they deserve more than they paid for to shove their way up front. my money will not go to the civic center or mr urban again....shame on them.
Comment by shellbell — June 1, 2009 @ 12:39 pm
Last year, we had no problem with fan club pre-sale tix for this venue. The pre-sale was handled through Ticketmaster, BUT you could NOT print tickets on your computer, NOR did you receive tix in the mail. It was all "Will Call". You printed out a confirmation # and then went to the fan club table at the venue to actually pick up your tickets after showing the printout and your ID & Credit card. It worked beautifully.
I also had this same situation work very well for the Charlottesville show, that was ALSO on Will-Call.
In my opinion, I prefer not to deal with TM if possible - mostly because the internet scalpers abuse the system and snap up all the good seats before the REAL FANS can buy them. As for Roanoke's problems, there are solutions if they would have thought things through, but obviously they had no idea there would be a problem until it happened.
Comment by Feathers — June 3, 2009 @ 1:26 pm