Ticketmaster

In April 2008 BPM became an agent for ticketmaster. The agency extended to the stores in Waterford, Mallow and New Ross but excluded Wexford.

This was a new departure for the business requiring a settling in period.

The main problem has been explaining to customers that a ticketmaster agent has no great advantage in the allocation of tickets. In most cases we would advise customers to purchase their tickets on line directly from ticketmaster.

Though, as an agent, we have no great advantage in ticket allocation we can offer some other small advantages.

1. The service charge is less when you purchase from an agent rather than on line.

2. When you purchase from an agent you get your ticket immediately (on line purchased tickets are only issued a few weeks prior to the event date).

3. As an agent we are probably guaranteed to be able to get some tickets as our system is linked directly to the Ticketmaster database. However if an event sells out in five minutes we might get time to print only four or six tickets. Great if you are first in the queue but not much good if you are down the line.

When the ACDC tickets went on sale on Friday last we managed to satisfy all customers outside our New Ross and Mallow stores at 9:00 a.m. that morning. However, there was a large queue outside our Waterford store and there was only the same number of tickets as New Ross and Mallow. Unfortunately a lot of would-be concert goers went away disappointed.

As a business we hate to see any customers disappointed but tickets are way beyond our control.

Oasis (Slane) tickets go on sale on Friday at 8:00 a.m. Hopefully there will be tickets to satisfy all customers!