The Ticketmaster Class-Action Settlement is Bullshit

he Schlesinger v. Ticketmaster Settlement yielded free general admission ticket vouchers, $2.25 Ticketmaster coupons (seriously, that’s the amount off with each redemption code), and $5 UPS vouchers to millions of Ticketmaster customers who were victims of Ticketmaster’s bullshit fees from 2009-2013.  The class action lawsuit was filed alleging that Ticketmaster failed to fully disclose to consumers all aspects of its UPS and Order Processing Fees.  The ticket vouchers can only be used for select concerts on the Live Nation website, and the list is one hot, steaming, stinky pile of bullshit.

I live in Chicago, and the nearest venue listed on the Live Nation site is the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre in Tinley Park, IL 33 miles away.  I looked through the list of available shows, and there weren’t many worth the trip.  The best ones listed include:

7/10/16 Weezer and Panic at the Disco!

7/22/16 Hall & Oates

8/5/16 The Art of Rap Festival, featuring Public Enemy, Ice-T, Naughty by Nature, and more

8/16/16 Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa

There are more shows listed, but only the Art of Rap Festival above and Black Sabbath on 9/4/16 are still available as of 8PM tonight.  All other shows on the Live Nation website for Tinely Park read “Voucher Sold Out for this Event”.  As shitty as the selection was to begin with, you can’t even redeem your vouchers any more for the majority of shows any more.

The only winners in this class action settlement are the lawyers, the shitty concerts that wouldn’t sell out anyway, and StubHub.  General Admission tickets for every venue on the list are popping up on the popular ticket resale site at an alarming rate.  I guess if you were able to redeem your code for a show and get a few bucks out of it, it’s better than nothing, but this settlement is complete bullshit.  An absolute joke.

The vouchers are good until 2020, but there’s no telling when new shows are going to be added to the site and whether or not they’ll include more local venues.  While I’m not happy about having to travel a minimum of 33 miles to use my tickets, I consider myself one of the lucky ones.  As one Facebook user mentioned on Ticketmaster’s page, Dallas is the only city in Texas listed on the Live Nation site.  If you live in say, Houston, a major US City, you’re 240 miles away from the nearest venue, which makes the vouchers pretty worthless.

Thanks for nothing, Ticketmaster.