Ticketmaster recently settled a class-action lawsuit regarding its “excessive and deceptive” convenience fees, requiring the ticketing behemoth to provide customers who purchased tickets between 1999 and 2013 with discount codes and vouchers for free tickets to concerts.
Great news, right? Who doesn’t love free tickets?
But speculation about the level of quality for those select concerts naturally flooded Twitter, since anyone who has a history with Ticketmaster knows that the company’s not exactly revered for giving consumers what they want. (Here, in fact, is an in-depth run-down by the former CEO of Ticketmaster explaining how the system is completely rigged against the average person trying to buy tickets.)
On Wednesday, Ticketmaster released the list of concerts eligible for the free-voucher redemption, and you could hear a collective groan across the internet. Alyssa Pereira over at SFGate tirelessly compiled the shows in the Bay Area eligible for the free vouchers, including Bryan Adams, Darius Rucker, Counting Crows, Hall & Oates, Pitbull, Sublime With Rome and many, many others.
Counting Crows may be your thing, and that’s cool, no judgment here. But here’s a fact: Barring the miraculous resurrection of John Coltrane who announces a one-night only guest appearance with Adam Duritz, Counting Crows is never, ever going to be able to sell out the 22,500-capacity Shoreline Amphitheater in the year 2016. What Ticketmaster is offering, mostly, is scraps, leftovers, unwanted surplus, #TaxWriteOff.