Manchester Sham

[elfra]

What a disappointment, I was unable to get a ticket for the Tue, Wed, Fri, concert but felt really hopeful when I read that the Guardian had bought all the Thurs evening tickets and that they would be on sale for Guardian News readers, I went to the booking office at the Palace theater, with a queue of approximately twenty people in front of me I thought I had a chance of getting a ticket, silly me, only half the people in the queue got tickets then they announced they had sold out, ticket touts rule and even the Guardian can't beat them.

love to all
Elfra
alias Elizabeth Francis

[bella]

i am so disappointed . i suppose i had my last hopes pinned on this Guardian offer having been unlucky in the earlier tickets sales. i can't remember any concerts that i've tried to get tickets for before when i haven't got something halfway reasonable at least, to end up with nothing has left me rather bereft. i suppose i just hope now that this years tour will be so enjoyable for L.C. that he does another. And in many ways it is fantastic that tickets have sold out (appreciation of LC and income) , though of course we knew they would

i hope you all had better luck

bella

[John J]

As I've said in an earlier thread ,todays tickets went on sale earlier than stated,I got 2 in the stalls
before 10am.

As in an earlier thread I may have 2 spares which will be offered here at cost.

[jondi]

The queueing was disgusting, one bullying gangmaster with his group of trackmarked addicts who were given the guardians and cash. LC should not be too proud of this , The Festival does not smell of roses and The Guardian has used this as a means to shift newsprint. I have some spare seats that given the disappointment of true fans I will yield, I'd hoped to go to three nights but think I will sell at face and setlle for one. This has been a disgrace in any language

[frankiecrisp]

The queueing was disgusting, one bullying gangmaster with his group of trackmarked addicts who were given the guardians and cash. LC should not be too proud of this , The Festival does not smell of roses and The Guardian has used this as a means to shift newsprint. I have some spare seats that given the disappointment of true fans I will yield, I'd hoped to go to three nights but think I will sell at face and setlle for one. This has been a disgrace in any language

Do you think LC or his managment give a toss about who buys the tickets if they did they would have set up a genuine fan allocation as many other artists do with Bob Dylan the best example not this pathetic help a tout farce through the Guardian.

[Scooby Doo]

Whilst I appreciate the disappointment of some of you, personally I feel the comments are beyond the mark. Leonard probably does not know what goes on in the big wide world of ticket marketing.

I doubt for one second if He did, what has happened would have...

Scooby

[terry shute]

I'm a Dylan fan and a Cohen enthusiast - first saw Len at the Isle of Wight in 1970, then again in Manchester sometime in the early 80s, and was looking forward to the Opera House...until this bitter battle for tickets!
I managed to get two for the Tuesday, a reasonable spot in the stalls. That was stressful enough. Today I tried to buy two more from the Guardian sale, for friends who couldn't go online themselves.
First, the booking opens early. Then the web-page develops a glitch - in the box for my credit card security number, it refuses to let me type anything. so in desperation I go back to the start - and by now everything has gone. Mostly to touting filth, if e-bay is anything to go by.
The whole experience of trying to get to see Leonard Cohen has been utterly depressing. I feel no anticipation or excitement about going now. I feel I just want to recover my 150 quid, sell the tickets I have & stay home.
Sorry Len, unlike Bob you're just not worth the heartache & effort.

[roubiliac]

You could have pre registered with Ticketmaster and had all your details ready to go without the need to type anything in. It was probably people who had that were faster than you.

[terry shute]

I WAS pre-registered with Ticketmaster. It DID have all my details (from the sale on March 14). Apart from one thing - the box for the card security code number was left blank. The cursor was in place - but it wouldn't let me write! so there was nothing else to do, but go back to Start. any by then, all had been lost.
This song has grown old & bitter.

[ms.blue]

Hi terry
had similar problems...also phone cut off during call!!! had two computers and two phones on the go and got nowhere...you were not alone by any stretch!

[jessica bennett]

Just a quick note to say thanks to Alan and Jarrko for providing the information on getting a ticket for this whole Guardian thing. We are two very happy campers from Australia who managed to get tickets for the gig. Getting hold of the Guardian and the password on Friday morning was going to be tough from here (friends in London were on standby!), until it was posted on the forum. There was more chance for fans to get tickets by putting it on the forum than scalpers who will get hold of the password anyway.

The whole idea of getting tickets and competing with scalpers is farcical yes, but it seems to be the nature of buying tickets anywhere in the world these days. Bob Dylan came here last year and the best tickets we could get for one show, only 2 mins after they went on sale, was the absolute back row of a 10,000 seat venue! We need some sort of ID system by which the people who buy tickets/for whom tickets are bought have to use them, without the opportunity to sell them on.

Thanks again for giving a couple of Aussies the chance to get a ticket (now we've just got to make it over there!), and it's nice to see a few people on the forum who have missed out on tickets wishing others a good concert- I'm sure Mr Cohen would appreciate the good karma going around!

Jess & Brad

[annie blue]

Jess, the registration for ticket sales i.e. whoever buys the ticket uses the ticket, is the method adopted at Glastonbury. People complain in their hundreds about the registration process and how it used to be so easy when you just bought a ticket. It more or less makes a lottery out of it. So I guess that both ways have their downsides and it seems impossible to make everyone happy. However, I do think that genuine fans should have been offered sales first as in Toronto etc. This whole tout fiasco is sickening. Manchester should be ashamed. Congrats on getting your tickets, I was lucky enough to get in at the first attempt without needing the Gaurdian - a paper that has now gone down in my estimation.

Annie

[jondi]

Sorry Scooby, It was never going to be too tricky to work out that with long distances being travelled and multiple nights being put on in a relatively, very, small venue a secondary market would have flourished. Touts putting up prices will not increase demand but increasing supply would depress prices and deter touting at least in future so well done Dublin. As others have said I have no problem with LC getting the cash but money from a noble cause is ending up in the wrong hands.

[terry shute]

The Guardian 'offer' was exactly as described on the title to this thread...a 'sham'. No way could it ever be what the paper claimed, an evening for Guardian readers.
Effectively, the paper had no control over proceedings, and no input to the event - all it did was run ads giving the links to Ticketmaster, and a pointless code that was readily available here, or to anyone who called in to WH Smith and turned over the page.
They could have put up their own money - bought out the theatre for the night, and then offered the tickets to readers who collect vouchers from the paper over a period of, say, a couple of weeks.
It wouldn't have out-foxed the touts completely. But it would have avoided the kind of pitched battle we saw at 10 on Bloody Friday.
And then they could more truthfully have called it a Guardian evening.
I suspect this deal was hatched between the beards-and-sandals brigade of the Manchester Festival and the once-so-called 'Manchester' Guardian, so that the executives of both could sideline the best seats for themselves.
what an appalling way to treat the honest fan! and with, I would guess, the connivance of Cohen's management!
I know this site has offered a helpful service, especially to folks such as the Australian devotees above.
But the Dylan distribution network is the best example of how it should be done. A few hundred of the best tix at each show are put aside, and the promoters negotiate with a couple of fan contacts who take in postal applications & payments.
Nobody gets hurt! Perfect!

[jondi]

Nice one Terry. I echo your feelings