Boston gigs/EBay question/I'm ashamed

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RockStar666

Babyface
Joined
Jan 31, 2005
Messages
8
Location
Boston, MA
Well, after failing to score anything during the general on-sale this past weekend [with my girlfriend frantically trying as well], we decided that it might be best to bite the bullet and buy GA tickets off of EBay.

Not only do I feel ashamed for giving in to scalpers, I'm also worried that since U2 are making an attempt to squander these EBay sales, I might get screwed out of these tickets in the long run. We used the "Buy It Now" option...so, I'm assuming I'm safe here. Correct?

Man, I went to all 4 gigs in Boston during the Elevation Tour without breaking a sweat in the ticketing process...this is purely insane.
 
It's just crazy what this whole thing has come to. Is GA what you wanted, or did you want reserved?
 
I was dying for GA tix. I was inside the heart during one of the Elevation gigs and vowed to do the same this tour. As of now, I'm still looking for reserved seats for the other two shows.
 
Another tip -- if it's not a Buy It Now auction, don't submit a bid until a few minutes before the auction ends.
 
Hey, it's only money. You can't take it with you when you die, ya know? The band is getting up there... there aren't many oppurtunities left.

That said,k I would advise taking your chances day of, or at least a few weeks from now. I would suspect we'll see a market correction soon that will lower those prices a bit. Also, if you go day of, you'll have a chance of getting one for face from a fellow u2 fan who has an extra (I both sold 1 and got 1 at face this way on the elevation tour). Also, tickets are almost always released for day of sales. I got a GA in Providence that way.
 
You can't see me on the Elevation DVD, unfortunately. But that week goes down in history as one of the best weeks of my life. I worked at an architectural firm that was a 5 minute walk away from the FleetCenter, it was great.

So...you guys think I'm safe if I nabbed the "Buy It Now" option?
 
RockStar666 said:
Let's say that 2 GA tix amounted to a full week's paycheck for me. I'm way too ashamed to tell you the price. :(


It happens. :hug: I'm ashamed to say what I paid for 2 seats and that was in the presale, not Ebay. :der:

Maybe you could email the seller and ask if they actually have the tickets in their possession? That's the thing I'd worry about, I know some of them have posted auctions for tickets they don't even have yet. One of them was even posting here.
 
Don't be ashamed. There's nothing wrong with buying tickets off of eBay or from any other aftermarket source. I look at it this way: I work hard for my money and I can spend it how I choose. If that means splurging a little to treat myself, so be it.

My time is valuable, and the resale market just makes financial and personal sense to me. I am a fan of the music and the band. That doesn't mean I have to be proficient at getting good tickets at face value. To spend ridiculous numbers of hours trying to figure out the system, then wake up early on my weekend to get on a computer or phone and tremble for an hour hoping to get tickets, and then spend countless more hours complaining about the process just doesn't interest me. And I don't believe it would make me any more of a fan to do things that way.

It was different when I was in high school, and even at times in college, when I really had nothing better to do with my time. But the system was also much simpler then--go wait overnight in line or take your chance on the phone. Ticketmaster online sales has complicated the process for big events like this. At the same time, my life has gotten busier, time is at a premium, and eBay makes getting the tickets--and thus the entire experience--simple and fun again.

So definitely don't feel bad. A year from now, you'll look back and remember every glorious moment you bought with that week's pay. Could you say the same thing if you just paid the normal bills and went to a movie?
 
ThisIs40, you are fantastically correct. All day Saturday I kept thinking to myself, "Well, you're going to be a few feet away from Bono during one of the best nites of your life with the woman you love, is it REALLY that bad you spent a load of money?"

Thanx for making me feel a little better!

I'm not sure as to what the EBayer actually had up...my girlfriend was the one who purchased them, as I was on a train coming to see her during the process. She just used my PayPal account to buy them.

I reiterate my point: so much easier 4 years ago!
 
Your tickets have no way of being cancelled by u2 or ticketmaster. The transaction is over now, they are trying to shut down auctions while theyre still taking place.
 
A co-worker of mine has purchased tickets for the Stones and Aerosmith via eBay several times. She has never had a problem with any of the transactions. She says the important thing to notice is the feedback on the seller--if it's 100% or very close, your chances of a successful transaction are extremely high.

Have fun at the concert!
 
just think, for less than the price of one coffee a day for every day in between the Boston shows in 6/01 and the new shows in 5/05, it is worth every penny, even for e4xpensive tickets.
i try to get as many shows for face value, count them as a blessing if i do, and then resort to ebay for the other shows. last tour ebay wasnt quite as popular as it is now, and i think the market will correct itself, and it does seem to be alot more resonable than the ticket broker sites.
I spent $390 with the $40 pre-sale and face value $ 165 tickets, now i feel dumb for doing that rather than spending $30 more for GA's on ebay.
 
Haha, incredible way of thinking about it! Too bad I still can't pull myself away from Starbuck's in the morning. There's still hope for the third leg...just no more lattes until next year.

Thanx for the reassurance, as well. You guys rock.

As far as the money issue goes, it is more or less a moral one on my part. My girlfriend is moving to Boston in 4 months, and that's half of a month's rent spent on two rectangular pieces of paper.

However, I just can't get hearing "Until The End Of The World" and Bono reaching down to give me a high five from the last tour out of my system...I'm psyched and the show is 4 months away!
 
Guinness Stout said:
I spent $390 with the $40 pre-sale and face value $ 165 tickets, now i feel dumb for doing that rather than spending $30 more for GA's on ebay.

Great point.... i was just browsing ebay myself, and it looks like a pair of GAs for Boston are going for around $400. Compare that to ~$350 for loge seats at face value, and it looks like a pretty good deal!

A long-ago personal story: my wife used to LOVE Huey Lewis (please spare the flames), so she spent $350 for a pair of front row seats to a show back in the early '90s. Seemed like an obscene amount of money at the time. During the show, Huey actually reached down and held my wife's hand and sang to her! I guarantee she doesn't remember - or care - how much those tickets cost.... :)
 
If it was Buy it now you should be safe, as ebay cannot pull an auction that is already ended.
 
I know how you feel. Every ticket I bought for Elevation was from a scalper. I hated handing him over $$$ to see my favorite band. Don't worry about it too much, when it comes to the day of the concert, standing GA with U2 just about to rock the house I'm sure you'll get your moneys worth.
 
Miss You Sugar said:
Are you visible on the Elevation DVD?

Im on the dvd. Im the one whose hand Bono grabs during Bad. He held it for half the song. I almost passed out.

Id go gay for him!
 
I certainly hope all devout U2 People keep the tickets they want, but, well, some of us who also work hard for our money cannot afford to pay the "amped" prices. Bono's not exactly anti-capitalist, but I'm glad the U2 organization is taking action against the most severe online scalping.
In 1984, at 17, I slept outside a record store in Michigan to get tickets to see them at the Fox Theater (capacity 5,000) on the first leg of Unforgettable Fire. I also stayed late to get a hug from Bono in the parking lot. In early 85, I spent the night in a car, the same night a friend froze to death, to get tickets for Joe Louis Arena. The Ticketmaster employee bought a dozen or more for himself and friends before letting me in the system.
On Saturday, I spent 90 minutes on Ticketmaster, finally getting a $50 single seat, rear stage, upper bowl, for Chicago on 5-9-5. My wife thinks I'm crazy, but I'll drive or fly alone from Central Tennessee to the city of my birth to see Bono on his birthday.
This is what a fan does.
--Anu
 
Thanks, Anu...some of us are STILL "poor" in our 30's for this kind of thing, due to circumstances beyond our control. I had a nice little tour fund carefully built up over the past yr but due to a family illness of my own over the summer (how I feel for Edge!) I had to give most of it away to my mother to help pay expenses for my sick grandma. Bye bye tour fund. I had to bust my butt working overtime in Oct and Nov to even afford 1 show (luckily during holiday season I could do this, and I anticipated prices even more expensive then they are). I live in Albany, NY and we were one of the "postponed" dates, I'm sure of it. I was trying for MSG and Boston. I knew nobody in those places who was a fan, nobody to try for tix for me, and I had gotten all my tickets over the yrs either by standing in line or Propaganda. I was at the DVD show too..not in GA (the GA show I picked for Elevation thru Prop was the right one: the first post 9/11 MSG show in the fall...2 feet from Edge, they let me go up front as I am so short...after that, nothing else compares.

Thank God for Wire and this site...back in October I sent a couple of frantic "help!" posts out explaining my dilemma...they paid off, or one of them did: I "met" someone on here who I got to know very well over the holidays, and he came through for me and got us nosebleeds for MSG, which I can't say I'm overjoyed at since thru the old Prop I could have done better, but I knew the presale was going to be a disaster and yay! I now have an unused code I can use in the fall. Considering there was 1 MSG show and it sold out in 6 min, and most of the GA in both NY and NJ went to brokers, I consider myself very lucky. I'm happy. I know what nosebleed is like since I saw Celine Dion that way, I was surprised at how well I could hear, and since U2 are much louder, I can hear them fine. AllI'll need are the binocs. And it's right next to/above the stage nosebleeds too. I was desperate to get to the show that was going to be in the place where "City of Blinding Lights" was written, I had been at that show and in the GA too, I was probably one of the "crying"people he cited...and I didn't care were.....(see Bono's interviews for this subject.) And now I have "met" someone on here who I know isn't a broker, who is going to sell me section 100's for first night Jersey. Hopefully. And someone else who has promised to give me any extra tix she has for Boston if her HER friend comes through (as expected.)

All for face value, and these people are so nice they're letting me pay by "insallment plan." :wink:

So there are way to get tix, without a broker, if you are desperate. Of course if you MUST have GA's, than there may be no other option. I hope Larry really busts his balls over this, b/c it's Larry I hope he knows we're holding him to a high account, the man has guts to put himself up on the guillotine..but after all, in case we forget, it's HIS band....that's our Lardence:wink:

I know what GA is like, I can understand why people are desperate. But for me, after the 9/11 show, it's all downhill. NOTHING compares with that. And I have seen the band 7 times and had a great time at all the other non-GA's, I'm happy.
 
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The notion that this might be their last tour is also bothering me. They're not getting any younger, and neither am I. But I may be priced out considering what tickets are going for, even though I'm qualified for the presale for the third leg, which is going to go much more smoothly. It's not the end of the world, just pretty disappointing. I'll get over this when I walk into Ayasofia Museum in Istanbul next spring and have to pinch myself and remind myself, yes, I'm really here, I'm not dreaming anymore! After all I have seen U2 four times but I've never been to Turkey. I'll come back with a gazillion ideas for paintings.
 
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