A recent article posted on STLToday.com announcing ticket prices for the upcoming Radiohead concert at Scottrade Center cites some frankly laughable answers to Qs&As provided by Live Nation about “convenient” paperless tickets.
Among them:
Paperless tickets have been used successfully at many large events and customers comment that this process was very easy.
If you have your credit card and government issued ID ready to go, entry is just as fast [as with paper tickets].
We don’t know what customers they’re talking to because the fans we’ve heard from would certainly refute these claims of convenience, ease and speed. In fact, fans have written to us about long lines and delays caused by paperless tickets at Justin Bieber and Michael Buble concerts, among others.
One reason is each fan has to show the credit card they used to purchase the ticket, plus a photo ID. Lost or forgotten cards, expired cards, cards that can’t be scanned, are all cause for “alternative handling,” as Live Nation freely acknowledges. Translation: you may get in – or you may not.
One fan, whose aunt was lucky enough to snag him a ticket for the much-publicized Radiohead concert in New York City last month, wasn’t taking a chance. Though not a Radiohead fan herself, Veronica Amaya drove seven hours just to present her credit card and photo ID so her nephew would be sure to get in. Fast? Convenient? We don’t think so.
If this were a pop quiz, Live Nation wouldn’t have done so well. The questions are the right ones to be asking, but some of their answers are just plain wrong.