There has to be a better way to allocate tickets

[Rose-Colored Boy]

4 minutes ago, mikegday said:

I prefer a much longer drawn out ticket sale - today is actual preferable in terms of rewarding those who stuck around and kept trying until the bitter end.

If they dragged it out for a whole day maybe. Don’t know that 20 minutes here or there will have made much difference. 

[Gnomicide]

1 hour ago, stuartbert two hats said:

My groups all got through, but that was incredibly painful. I think I got kicked out at every single stage possible. I can't object to not getting tickets if there's more demand than availability, but that was a shambles.

It's far less objectionable if the tickets sell out in 20 minutes without crashing, even if this kind of nonsense favours the obsessives who post on forums.

Up the kind of nonsense favours the obsessives who post on forums!

[Crazyfool01]

42 minutes ago, kingbadger said:

I imagine at that point technically it is, as all tickets are allocated, but every year some go back in the pot due to declined payments etc. Just it pays to know this and to persevere, which is why some of us got rewarded. 

How does it work then with different browsers getting the sold out message at various times ? Are a set number of tickets allocated to each server ? 

[Neil]

1 hour ago, Rose-Colored Boy said:

It doesn’t hurt the reputation of the festival in any significant way so why would they spend money on improving it? The only reason to change anything about the ticketing system from the perspective of the fest or See would be if it actively started discouraging significant numbers of people from trying, but there’s no evidence of that happening despite tickets being nightmare to get hold of for well over a decade now. So regardless of the opinions of us punters it ain’t changing. 

see have improved their systems loads over the years. don't be too hard on them, there is no perfect system.

[aj6658]

This comes up every year and we get the same frustrated people who dont get tickets demanding quite honestly terrible ideas

• Ballot - it's been discussed to death. It would make getting a ticket 100x worse. I could put my details down and forget and I could potentially get a ticket 
• Infrastructure. Could it be better sure. But you got to imagine that there must be millions of connections going in at one time. a group of 6 going for tickets, each using up to 5 connections (2 windows on a work laptop, 2 on personal and a phone) that's already 30 connections in a group. Imagine that people friends of friend trying and with more devices and over 100,000 people trying  

[Rose-Colored Boy]

5 minutes ago, Neil said:

see have improved their systems loads over the years. don't be too hard on them, there is no perfect system.

They may have improved loads over the years, but more than a decade after it started happening it’s still the case that the majority of people trying don’t even get to see the registration number page, and plenty more get thrown out at the payment confirmation page. When other ticket websites manage massive events without any such nonsense, I don’t think it’s being too hard to suggest See could improve further if they had the business need to do so. 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Rose-Colored Boy

[Neil]

3 minutes ago, Rose-Colored Boy said:

They may have improved loads over the years, but more than a decade after it started happening it’s still the case that the majority of people trying don’t even get to the holding page, and plenty more get thrown out at the payment confirmation page. When other ticket websites manage massive events without any such nonsense, I don’t think it’s being too hard to suggest See could improve further if they had the business need to do so. 

any sytem where people fail to get tickets will get a slagging, and people will always fail to get tickets  cos there's not enough tickets to satisfy demand.

Edited November 6, 2022 by Neil

[dotdash79]

3 minutes ago, Rose-Colored Boy said:

They may have improved loads over the years, but more than a decade after it started happening it’s still the case that the majority of people trying don’t even get to see the registration number page, and plenty more get thrown out at the payment confirmation page. When other ticket websites manage massive events without any such nonsense, I don’t think it’s being too hard to suggest See could improve further if they had the business need to do so. 

See could scale the infrastructure to sell all the tickets in 2 min, but then loads of people would be annoyed at that.

No system is perfect but this is the best of a bad bunch.

[Neil]

1 minute ago, dotdash79 said:

See could scale the infrastructure to sell all the tickets in 2 min, but then loads of people would be annoyed at that.

 glasto pick a time for how long they want the sale to take, and see's system is then throttled to match that.

 

1 minute ago, dotdash79 said:

No system is perfect but this is the best of a bad bunch.

agreed.

[bamber]

Congratulations to all who got tickets this morning and comiserations to those who did not. My view is that the current system is as fair as it can possibly be. I went through the stress of ticket day on the internet for a decade or more, in the end, I opted out and now work at the Festival,  I hated the stress. Last night I went to see Cat Power sing Dylan at the Albert Hall, then had a few beers afterwards , late night and lie-in this morning,  zero stress. There is a lot to be said for working  at the Festival.....

[Rose-Colored Boy]

6 minutes ago, dotdash79 said:

See could scale the infrastructure to sell all the tickets in 2 min, but then loads of people would be annoyed at that.

 

Right but there’s a huge gap between that and the current system where the bulk of people don’t even reach a holding page so end up questioning their own (perfectly good) internet connections etc. Just comes across as amateurish. 

[I am Jon]

On 10/6/2019 at 10:21 AM, concerned said:

Websites like Facebook manage it. However that load is constant. You can't really expect seetickets to invest in that much gear for 1 or 2 days a year.

Sites like Facebook, Amazon etc are broken down into regions, sub regions etc. Almost like running 1000’s of separate sites with data sync’ed between them. 
 

Seetickets will be more like a single site with all the traffic going into a single location. Multiple sites would create issues with real time data sync’s and people in some parts of country / isp’s having more luck than others. 

[Ayrshire Chris]

16 minutes ago, Crazyfool01 said:

How does it work then with different browsers getting the sold out message at various times ? Are a set number of tickets allocated to each server ? 

Who knows, I kept getting the sold out message from around quarter to ten then kept battering f5. The holding page reappeared then vanished at least 10 times until half ten when I got the reg page. Even then on proceed I got the sold out message several times, hit back and finally the payment page. Didn’t have to verify the payment and confirmation arrive right away. The strangest and most fraught ticket day ever.  Perseverance paid off. 

[Crazyfool01]

Just now, Ayrshire Chris said:

Who knows, I kept getting the sold out message from around quarter to ten then kept battering f5. The holding page reappeared then vanished at least 10 times until half ten when I got the reg page. Even then on proceed I got the sold out message several times, hit back and finally the payment page. Didn’t have to verify the payment and confirmation arrive right away. The strangest and most fraught ticket day ever.  Perseverance paid off. 

yeah absolute bonkers ... congratulations 🙂 

[maelzoid]

As a comparison, the London Marathon uses a ballot system.

I applied 15 times before finally getting successful this year. Is this what anybody wants for Glastonbury?

[Mezhyp1]

We failed miserably as a group this year for the first time in a decade and i'd absolutely hate to see then change it. it works perfectly fine

[gigpusher]

1 minute ago, maelzoid said:

As a comparison, the London Marathon uses a ballot system.

I applied 15 times before finally getting successful this year. Is this what anybody wants for Glastonbury?

Exactly ballots suck big time. My friend has also been unsuccessful 15 times, my husband got in after 5 attempts and his cousin who couldn't even run 5km got in first go. Realised quickly she didn't have a hope of running it and so the place was wasted. 

[MEGATRONICMEATWAGON]

It's not going to get better until all the world's megastars have played and they're resigned to booking Ezra, Foals, and Lil Simz to be the headliners 😉

[cheesey_toastie]

I wonder if there is a way of having the best of both worlds!?

You register in advance. On the morning (say tickets are open 9am - 12) the system selects x lucky winners every 20 minutes. They have 20 minutes to purchase (link in email provides a token that allows them onto a server that isn't overwhelmed). If they aren't super keen and keeping an eye they miss out. Then the next load of tickets offers go out - See Tickets keeps offering until it's sold out. 

To avoid email delay issues whole group gets an email?! 

The advantage here is that those that get through will be guaranteed to get a server that will cope with their transaction. 

I don't mind page errors and waiting pages but I really do hope they can find a system that once your tickets are allocated you know the payment screen will work. 

That said - I've always done very well with the existing system... 

[Rose-Colored Boy]

10 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

As a comparison, the London Marathon uses a ballot system.

I applied 15 times before finally getting successful this year. Is this what anybody wants for Glastonbury?

It would at least benefit from the the illusion of being fair even if the odds of success were no better. Would definitely say that any ballot system would need some sort of way of putting off people who aren’t really all that interested, whether that’s asking people to pay to register (🤢), opening ballot registrations for an hour at 2am on a Thursday, or making people agree to have the full ticket price immediately taken from their bank account if successful.

Then the resale in April could still be the usual SeeTickets bloodbath for people who prefer it that way. 

Edited November 6, 2022 by Rose-Colored Boy

[Madyaker]

12 minutes ago, Ayrshire Chris said:

Who knows, I kept getting the sold out message from around quarter to ten then kept battering f5. The holding page reappeared then vanished at least 10 times until half ten when I got the reg page. Even then on proceed I got the sold out message several times, hit back and finally the payment page. Didn’t have to verify the payment and confirmation arrive right away. The strangest and most fraught ticket day ever.  Perseverance paid off. 

Hahaha this is absolutely wild, it seems to get crazier every year.

[Old_Johno]

11 minutes ago, maelzoid said:

As a comparison, the London Marathon uses a ballot system.

I applied 15 times before finally getting successful this year. Is this what anybody wants for Glastonbury?

Difference is you can qualify for automatic entry for the London marathon if you can run a marathon in a certain time. Whilst it would be nice to get a presale ‘cos I’m really good at festivalling’ it wouldn’t really work 

[aj6658]

20 minutes ago, cheesey_toastie said:

I wonder if there is a way of having the best of both worlds!?

You register in advance. On the morning (say tickets are open 9am - 12) the system selects x lucky winners every 20 minutes. They have 20 minutes to purchase (link in email provides a token that allows them onto a server that isn't overwhelmed). If they aren't super keen and keeping an eye they miss out. Then the next load of tickets offers go out - See Tickets keeps offering until it's sold out. 

To avoid email delay issues whole group gets an email?! 

The advantage here is that those that get through will be guaranteed to get a server that will cope with their transaction. 

I don't mind page errors and waiting pages but I really do hope they can find a system that once your tickets are allocated you know the payment screen will work. 

That said - I've always done very well with the existing system... 

That's just a ballot with more steps. If people are keen enough to go through spreadsheets, waking up early on 9am and all that im sure even more people would be keen to look out for an email.

 

Demand > supply. There is no better system

[musky]

27 minutes ago, Rose-Colored Boy said:

It would at least benefit from the the illusion of being fair even if the odds of success were no better. Would definitely say that any ballot system would need some sort of way of putting off people who aren’t really all that interested, whether that’s asking people to pay to register (🤢), opening ballot registrations for an hour at 2am on a Thursday, or making people agree to have the full ticket price immediately taken from their bank account if successful.

Then the resale in April could still be the usual SeeTickets bloodbath for people who prefer it that way. 

I'm pretty sure the festival wouldn't go for any system that makes it more unaffordable unnecessarilly. It would just favour the wealthier.

[BigNeil]

Surely a way of saving the registrations you want to buy for PRIOR to the sale would make most sense?

• Run registration before sale as normal.
• Open the 'group registration' a week before sale, allowing users to enter and lock in the registration numbers/postcodes they want to buy for (See Tickets validate these at this point, rather than doing so when the system is overwhelmed).
• This 'group' of registrations gets a unique ID to copy and paste in, which is done at 9am Sunday when you click 'Buy Tickets'. 
• Each unique ID then joins a queue (only one device using the unique ID can advance into the queue at any one time - if it freezes/times out/loses connection, then someone else can access), and when you get through it takes you straight to the payment/transaction page.

This reduces a manual step when traffic is at its highest, takes away frantically trying to type in six registrations, irons out any issues with wrong numbers/postcodes, and stops people that have given their registration to more than one attempted buyer from locking out any others in a 'group' they might be in.