TICKETMASTERBATION

I’ve been trying to get Chicago Cubs tickets all morning, sitting in their virtual waiting room online and having zero luck. Today is basically a Cubs fan’s only opportunity to pay face value to see games of interest, as ticket brokers unscrupulously buy them all up the day tickets go on sale and then sell them back to the public at prices no less than twice the face value. They call it a convenience to purchase tickets through their service, but it’s really a money-making scam that’s been fleecing baseball fans out of their hard-earned money for years. Instead of doing something to prevent it, the Cubs organization has essentially JOINED in by sponsoring its own ticket brokerage where they scalp tickets under the guise of “service,” and cite "fair market value" for the egregious prices they charge. It’s rifuckingdiculous.

I thought I had the system beat when I called the Ticketmaster location in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan this morning – but was told they were unable to sell tickets for events in the U.S. And Ticketmaster locations outside of the Chicago area don’t have access to the games yet, so I had no luck there. The only real shot I’ve got is to continue monitoring all these virtual waiting rooms I’ve got on all the computers here at work and hope for the best – although now there’s a list of sold-out games that I can no longer get tickets for. They are games number 1,2,3, and 4 on my list of desired games. Go figure. They’re the same games EVERYBODY wants to go to, which is why the ticket brokers snap them all up first. Big money there. This whole scam is a loophole in the scalping law and it’s just plain wrong. But on the list of things to fix in this town, politicians don’t rank consumer corruption very high. They're more concerned with making sure cigarettes, which are legal to buy, are illegal to smoke in as many places as they can think of and enforce. Another tax hike well spent.

The message on this virtual waiting room, which refreshes every 30 seconds to remind me I should be patient, may as well read:

“Welcome to Cubs.com – we are actually laughing at your futile attempt to purchase tickets at face value. But try if you must. When you finally give up, here are some links to a number of local ticket brokers where tomorrow you’ll find tickets to pretty much any Cubs game you want…at a premium, of course. Not fair? Life’s not fair, bud. Figured an ugly asshole like you would be used to disappointment by now. Happy hunting, sucker!”

Looks like these two are going to be seeing the Cubs before I do!