Ticketbastards

For my birthday last month my co-workers gave me $40 in gift certificates for Ticketmaster because, well, I'm a concert junkie and Ticketmaster is my supplier. Gift certificates can only be redeemed at an actual Ticketmaster location, rather than the internet or over the phone. So I visited Robinsons-May in the Santa Monica mall last night to buy tickets for Marc Broussard's show next week. I wanted two tickets, which were $20 a piece, plus $2 each for some lame-ass facility fees, and then another $4 bullshit handling fee. Two tickets = $53. I gave them my $40 gift certificates and said I wanted to pay the $13 difference, but then they gave me some crap, saying that they couldn't do that and that I'd have to either pay for it all using gift certificates or all with a credit card - no splitting! I said that's absurd, but they wouldn't budge. They called Ticketmaster to figure out how to ring up my purchase via the gift certificates, and it sounded like the Ticketmaster operator reminded them about the lame-ass no-splitting payment methods policy. So I ended up having to buy one ticket with the gift certificate, one with my credit card and then they gave me the difference of one ticket and the $40 gift certificates in another $10 gift certificate. I said, "So does this mean I can only use this $10 gift certificate for an event that's less than $10? Because those don't exist." The two girls behind the counter just stared at me blankly, as if I'd just asked them what the square root of 2,246 was. (47.3919824, by the way.) I said, "Give me the number to Ticketmaster," took my tickets and left. I called Ticketmaster, asked the operator if what they said was true, and he said, "Umm....that's really hard! Let me ask my supervisor." A few minutes later he gets back on the line and says, "Um, you're at a department store?" "Yes." "Um, well, sometimes people at department stores don't know all the Ticketmaster policies. My supervisor told me that you could pay the difference with your credit card." "But they called Ticketmaster and that's not what they told them." "Um..." "OK, look. Tell your supervisor that they need to send out a memo or something to all your Ticketmaster locations about this policy, otherwise you're going to continue to piss people like me off. Now what do I do with this stupid $10 gift certificate?" "Use if for your next purchase." :::my teeth grinding::: "If I have to go through this crap again, I'm going to be REALLY pissed." And I hung up.

My version of Murphy's law: If something can go wrong, it'll happen to Nanette.

Ass hats.

"Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them." - Walter Kerr