So first thing I did this morning was get myself tickets to Madonna’s Philly concert, which went on sale this morning at 10am. Let me tell you it wasn’t as easy as it should have been either.

Ticketmaster, which I normally use for my tickets as they basically have a monopoly on the industry, dropped the ball. They did NOT have Madonna’s concert listed for Philly. It was up there as of last week, but then on Friday Madonna announced a date change. I suspect this has to do with why the concert was removed from their page. However they didn’t put it back up, so they’ve missed out on a lot of online ticket sales. This of course means they don’t get to rake in the money from their outrageous “service fees,” which Emily often refers to as being anally raped by Ticketmaster.

This basically left me with two choices. Call ticketmaster and order over the phone, or use the box office site for the venue. Well the first of those two choices were out of the question. I hate hate hate HATE dealing with people over the phone when it involves some kind of transaction like this. I wasn’t about to spend ten minutes navigating their automated “Push 1 for . . . ” menus only to end up being greated with “Hello, my name is “Bob,” I am here to help you with your ticket purchase today. Please tell me how I may assist you? . . . . . . . So please, yes, I understand that you would like to purchase Madonna tickets? Is this correct? Come again, I’m sorry but I did not understand that last sentence.” Yeah, I know that was mean, but sadly it’s true and you all know it!

So I was left with the Wachovia Spectrum’s box office site, which is the most unfriendly thing EVER. The first 3-4 tries to get tickets it kept telling me “Sorry no tickets are available because . . . ” Eventually I got through to their insane word verification system. It’s one of those ones where you have to read the letters and numbers mashed together AND read them through the 3 year old’s scribble ontop of it. Half the time you get the word wrong or have to ask for a new one because you can’t read it at all! So then I choose best ticket’s available, only to be given great seats, for 350 dollars a ticket. I love Madonna, but I don’t love the new album THAT much. So back to the begining and the whole process repeats over. No tickets, insane word verification, finally tickets. I had to go through this about 4-5 times to finally score seats I was happy with and at the price I was willing to pay. In the end I ended up with seats better than we had at the “Confessions” tour, so it was worth the pain.

I do have to add one final gripe aout the fees and crap. Not only did Wachovia charge me the normal 20 some dollars in “service and processing” fees, but then they charged me for mailing me the tickets! I don’t think Ticketmaster even has the balls to do that unless you expidite the tickets. Regular standard old mail was $3.50. Okay so stamps, paper, ink and envelopes cost money . . . whatever. So what are the “service and processing” fees I’ve already paid? Not only was mailing that much, they charged $3.50 for the option of holding my tickets at will call. That’s normally free too! I guess they have to pay the person at the booth to hand the tickets out? Finally there was the print your tickets at home option. Hey, my paper, my ink, my resources . . . . $2.50 cents. Are you kidding me?