KISS ticket sales: Reseller psycho circus?

SooToday.com has received numerous e-mails and calls over the past 24 hours from disappointed KISS fans who've been unable to score tickets for the band's December 15 show at the Essar Centre. The following note from loyal reader Angela Gasparetto expresses her exasperation at failing to get tickets, then finding scads of them available on the Internet for up to $400 each.

SooToday.com decided to check out her story for ourselves.

We found hundreds of tickets offered for inflated prices on online sites.

One hundred and 32 tickets were for sale at the Stub Hub and KISStickets.net websites, ranging in price from $199 to $799.

We found 101 tickets for sale from $198 to $469 at Tickets Now, a website calling itself a resale marketplace from Ticketmaster.

My City Rocks was selling 100 tickets for US$182 to US$401. The four $401 tickets are in section B on the floor.

The same 100 tickets were also for sale on Show Time ($265 to $600), Ticket Stub (US$162 to $370), Tickets Inventory ($182 to $415), Ticket Liquidator, Ticket Network and Ticket Tango ($176 to $403).

Razorgator has 92 tickets from $215 to $590.

Vivid Seats has 62 seats on sale for prices ranging from $156 to $284.

Ace Tickets had 18 tickets for sale ranging in price from $315 to $440.

Ticket City has 14 tickets available from $275 to $350.

We also found someone offering a pair of fifth-row centre seats on Ebay picclick auctions. Bidding starts at $479 and it doesn't specify if the two tickets are included or the price is for each ticket.

SooToday.com will not allow our free classified ads to be used to scalp KISS tickets and users caught offering them at greater than face value are having their accounts revoked.

Here's Angela Gasparetto's letter to us: ************************* I encourage you to run an article about the way the tickets have been allocated for the KISS concert.

At 10 a.m. sharp on Oct. 24, I called the Essar Centre and spoke with a ticket agent about buying tickets.

This means I was among the very first to attempt to purchase tickets as they went on sale at 10 a.m.

The agent was searching for the best available seats when she said that her computer had seized up, then the phone went dead.

I immediately went online and was told there were no available tickets in any category.

That was at 10 a.m.

When I reached the telephone box office again at 10:10 a.m., I was told that "the computer shows no tickets available."

I asked how it was possible that the entire concert could have sold out in less than four minutes and was again told "the computer shows no tickets available."

There are tickets available all right, on Stub Hub and Ball Park, which had them immediately for sale for $202 to $400 for a $100 seat.

So much for the efforts of the good people of Sault Ste. Marie to bring KISS to the Essar Center.

Since there is a computer code that must be punched in by a human (not a computer) to buy online, I suspect that the tickets were all pre-sold to these resellers of tickets.

This is very disappointing and rather insulting given our effort to bring the group here.

I will not be attending the concert: even if I felt KISS were worth the $202, I can't condone this.

Thanks, Angela Gasparetto.

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