Tennessee’s attorney general vows to investigate customer complaints after “historically unprecedented demand” when Ticketmaster crashed during a Taylor Swift presale.
Nashville, Tenn. – Tennessee’s attorney general said his office plans to investigate customer complaints about Ticketmaster after the website crashed to the tune of millions of Taylor Swift fans — many of whom ended up without tickets. Done.
Fans who pre-registered and received a special presale code for Swift’s upcoming Eras tour had exclusive access to purchase tickets before the general public. But when the Ticketmaster queues opened at 10am local time on Tuesday, it was found that the website was not ready for it and the fans took down the website. Many customers faced errors and glitches that led them to fall out of line to buy tickets, wait in long queues for hours and pay exorbitant prices.
“He and his consumer protection team will use every tool to ensure that any violation of consumer protection laws is not violated,” said a news release from Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Scermati’s office. has not been done.”
Ticketmaster has not been accused of any actual wrongdoing.
On Tuesday, Ticketmaster explained to fans that there had been “historically unprecedented demand” for the tour, with millions trying to buy presale tickets.
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Some fans said they waited in Ticketmaster queues for hours only to be kicked out by the Ticketmaster website, losing their seats and missing out on tickets. Ticketmaster was forced to delay sales of the West Coast shows until Tuesday afternoon, and a separate presale for Capital One cardholders until Wednesday.
Tickets sold out quickly. Despite Ticketmaster’s “verified program,” which aims to keep tickets away from resellers, it didn’t take long for many to land on resale sites at exorbitant prices.
Complaints about chaos also caught the attention of lawmakers.
“Daily reminder that Ticketmaster is a monopoly, its merger with LiveNation should never have been approved, and they need to govern. Break them up,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. .
Live Nation, a concert promoter, merged with Ticketmaster in 2010. Consumer advocates have complained that the merger created some monopoly in the music events industry.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut pointed to Ticketmaster’s long history of controversial behavior and added, “Long story short, your anti-competitive behavior is not a love story for Taylor Swift concertgoers.”
The 52-date Era Tour kicks off on March 17 in Glendale, Arizona and concludes with five shows in Los Angeles on August 9. This is Swift’s first tour since 2018. General sale tickets go on sale Friday at 10am venue time. November 18.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.