Tickets for U2’s four Dublin shows and the band’s two concerts in Belfast had barely gone on sale at 9am on Monday when complaints about online ticket vendor Ticketmaster and the prices being sought on alternative platforms started appearing online.
As had been widely anticipated, the approximately 60,000 tickets for the Dublin concerts sold out in less than 30 minutes with the Belfast tickets taking slightly longer to shift.
Almost immediately, people took to social media platforms to report serious delays trying to access the Ticketmaster website while others expressed concern about the high prices those who had secured tickets were selling them for.
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If you’re seeing this page we are not down, our virtual queue has kicked in. We are however VERY busy with #U2Tickets pic.twitter.com/79rKn8GUt3
— Ticketmaster Ireland (@TicketmasterIre) September 14, 2015
Another of the early issues which caused concern came from people who inadvertently bought student tickets despite not being holders of valid student cards.
Ticketmaster said it was aware there was an issue connected to the sale of student tickets to non-students and a spokesman said the company was working to resolve any problems.
He said user unfamiliarity with the booking process was at the root of the issue and urged those who had bought a student ticket in error to contact Ticketmaster’s customer service department.
The spokesman said, however, it was not a problem with the systems but stemmed for users’ confusion over the booking process.
“These tickets were not assigned to them-they would have had to make clearly identified choices,” he said, adding that the company would do what it could to resolve any outstanding issues.
Referring to complaints about accessing the site, the spokesman said “it is really a simple matter of supply and demand. The website had to be queued to stop service being interrupted. Unfortunately some people in the queue will be too late and the tickets will be sold out before they get to the site.”
Meanwhile, demand for tickets saw prices soar on re-sale websites. StubHub, a website that resells concert tickets, had tickets listed for €3,697.33). They are for the Tuesday show at the 3Arena in the D seating section, directly in front of the stage.
While Ticketmaster owns Seatwave, it said tickets being sold on the site are being sold “by people who bought tickets this morning. They set the prices not Ticketmaster. It is a safe and secure marketplace to facilitate resale where the purchaser is guaranteed their ticket unlike other unsecured sites.”