Bookings Direct sucks

Well, that was my worst ever ticket booking experience. For some reason, the normal way to book tickets for WWE events – the lovely Ticketmaster – was only offering tickets for the Newcastle and Aberdeen shows. WWE website gave a phone number – which never connected, and a website address for a company called Bookings Direct.

So, I try the website. The shows don’t show up, so I keep hitting refresh. Some time around nine the page changes and Wrestlemania Revenge shows up and I get to select the Sheffield show – so far, pretty standard stuff. But then a first problem – they only offer the choice of three ticket price categories, no way to select preferences on seating, no way of knowing what price categories respond to what seating, no seating charts (which I BTW found from Ticketmaster). Just a box next to the ticket price indicating how many tickets you want, and opportunity to give your address and credit card number.

How annoying, but I proceed to fill in the information and select two tickets for the top price (and I’d like to add that on top of the £40 for the ticket, they charge fucking £5 per ticket for “handling fee” which is fucking 12.5% of the ticket price! AND a postage fee!). It said – this may take a while... so I wait. Then it comes back saying that there were not enough tickets left in that price range... WTF? Like two minutes after the tickets have gone sale all the top price tickets are gone?

I’m not young and naïve, and I’m experienced enough to understand that this puny little website has probably never seen this much traffic before and is most likely to be totally stuffed. So 15 minutes, couple of reloads later (every time it gives me different information on tickets available) and couple of tries later (Sorry! Don’t have tickets left in that price category! Please select again!) the system finally manages to barf out a reservation for me for the tickets I want.

But what a trouble. You’ll be sure I’ll be writing a letter of complaint as soon as I calm down enough to produce anything else than rude words and exclamation marks.