My teams are the Eagles & Dolphins. Yeah, I know you can’t have two, but I can. I’m special that way! Bliss would be going to a game and watching both teams at once. The trouble is they’re in different leagues and they only play each other every 4 years. To make it more complicated, they alternate home teams. That means they only play in Philly every 8 years. They WOULD have played a game 5 years ago, but there was a shuffling of divisions in 2002 and the Dolphins getting two home games in a row. They played in 2003 in Miami. This year they play in Philadelphia!
Tickets went on sale at 10 AM today for all of the Philadelphia Eagles home games and I was ready with Internet & Phone. I had juiced up on caffeine and laid out my credit cards in front of me. I was READY. A few minutes before 10 I started dialing the phones (plural) and hitting Refresh on my stripped-down-for-speed Internet Explorer (in 3 windows). The phone continually told me that all circuits were busy. The Internet told me tickets were not yet on sale. The phone continued to tell me all circuits were busy. Suddenly the Internet told me tickets were available! I told it to give me 4 “best available” seats and clicked the Next button. They told me that to prevent fraud I should tell them what is displayed in the graphic shown above.
The graphic couldn’t be displayed in my stripped down corporate IE session.
I failed.
All circuits were still busy on the phones but I had Firefox ready to go with a quick refresh. I tried only 2 tickets, filled in the Captcha “KISSER” & waited. A screen popped up telling me I had a 5 minute wait. Then it went to 7 minutes. Then 15.
It took about 6 minutes until the site came back like this:
Your request Is not available | ||
There were no tickets available that matched your request There are several things you can try:
| ||
Return to Event Page |
So once again I have failed to get tickets. This does not mean I will fail to see the game. It just means that it will cost me 3 or 4 times as much. Good thing Pennsylvania has that law that limits what a scalper can charge for the ticket! Good thing scalpers can charge a $200 “convenience charge” to get around that!
Hmmm. That’s a pretty clever idea. I wonder where the scalpers got that idea? (Hint: Ticketmaster).
So out I go to look at the low-life scum suckers who are already selling tickets. They’ll sell me end zone seats for 400% what they paid AND they’ll charge a $50 “service charge” on top of that. Nice, huh?
Long story short, I’ll have my tickets to this game one way or the other and then I’ll never see another professional sporting event in Philadelphia. Tickets are out of reach for the common man. The organization immediately put out a press release on how great the fans are and how hot the demand was. If they’d stop selling half of the tickets to brokers before they went on sale to us maybe we’d have a better shot at seeing the teams we love to hate to love.
Hey Kiddo,
Sorry for your loss! Here is a suggestion…give yourself an early Father’s Day present by buying a really ‘cool’ plasma T.V. high definition (the works.) Then take the $$$$$$$ you would have been scalped to actually sit in the stadium in the cold, or the snow, or the rain, and have all your buds over to watch the game; drink ‘near beer’ or whatever floats your boat, and sit back and ENJOY! You’ll see every play in H.D.in the glory of liquid screening and get to see ‘replay’ and slo mo and you want have to sit agonizing over the length of pauses between plays because of the damn commercials.
Here is another thought…start making plans NOW for the Dolphins / Eagles game IN MIAMI! Start a piggy bank to plop your change towards the BIG GAME in 4 years AND buy an H.D. plasma T.V. (wide screen of course) and if you can’t spring for the bucks, make sure that you conveniently find yourself in a BEST BUYS or CITY CIRCUIT watching the game. Even more fun…? A local sports bar; not to drink but because the more exclusive bars have H.D. wide screens and lots of yelling and fan carousing. A sports bar has been the most fun I ever had watching a game; and that includes being at a live game.
Oh, and I agree…the tickets are for the average “JOE FAN” anymore, or the FAN FAMILY, it’s for ???????? People who can afford to drop $500-2,000 per ticket and don’t mind charging up to the limit on their credit cards. You and I have more sense, eh?
Love you lots, and oh btw, I’m home!
Mom.com