Ticketmaster Bait and Switch and New Yankee Stadium Social Stratification Update

The other day, we shared the sad story of an unsuspecting Yankee fan who fell victim to a shady bait and switch technique by TicketMasterNation while trying to purchase some uber-expensive Opening Day Yankee tickets.

Today, we received word that Ticketmaster recognized their error, but was unwilling to make good on it. Here is the email that was sent:

Hello [name redacted], this is Ticketmaster Customer Service with an important alert regarding your order, [order No. redacted]. The tickets that you ordered from Ticketmaster for the New York Yankees vs. Cleveland Indians on Thursday, April 16, 2009 scheduled at the Yankee Stadium were put on sale inadvertently, allowing you to order tickets at an incorrect price.

We are currently holding replacement tickets for you in the price level that you had originally selected in Section 16, Row 9, Seat(s) S5.

Please call customer service at 800-653-8000 on or before 12 noon Eastern time on Monday, April 13, 2009 and you will be given the opportunity to exchange your tickets for these additional tickets to the New York Yankees vs. Cleveland Indians on Thursday, April 16, 2009 scheduled at the Yankee Stadium.

You are also free to decline the exchange and receive a full refund. If we do not hear from you by noon Eastern on Monday, April 13, 2009 your original tickets will be cancelled and your credit card refunded.

Please note your original tickets will be cancelled and will not be valid for entry.

We regret that we were not able to provide you with the tickets you ordered. We really appreciate your business and hope you give us the opportunity to better serve you in the future.

In other words, you can have your single, overpriced ticket for Opening Day, but it is not going to be the single overpriced Opening Day ticket that you purchased in the first row, it is going to be the one that Ticketmaster decides you can have. Hopefully this guy will give Ticketmaster the finger and let the seat rot.

Switching gears a bit, our post about the introduction of the caste system at the new Yankee Stadium drew interest from around the interwebs, and plenty of banter in the comments section. The "A-Z Guide" has not been updated, but some fans have taken it upon themselves to contact their ticket representatives for some clarification. We would never recommend trusting any information passed along by a Yankee ticket rep. Not because they are incompetent, but because they are constantly fed false information by their clueless leaders. That being said, our buddy "Legendary 23" on Twitter contacted his ticket rep who has always been good for accurate information. According to him, "people will have access to all food courts on all levels" and "the same rule applies to watching bp....you will have to leave and go back to your seat when they are done." Put simply, the guide on Yankees.com "is wrong."

We fully expect an update to the "A-Z Guide" resulting in the disappearance of the verbiage in question. Luckily we will always have the original words archived, proving just how out of touch the Yankee Stadium decision makers were prior to the fan uproar. Read the full post, after the jump

2009 Yankee Tickets Go On Sale For The General Public Today - Beware Of The Bait And Switch

Today at 10:00 AM the general public finally gets their crack at Yankee tickets without any preconceived notions of licensee status, lottery winner or anything else. All you have to do is be a human being (or a cleverly written computer program that knows how to read CAPTCHA), and you can log on to Ticketmaster.com to see what is left after the three separate presales. The good news for everyone not lucky enough to have been included in a prior presale is that the Yankees have created pools of tickets available for each presale. In theory, there should be close to as many Opening Day tickets for today's sale as there were for the other presales - or at least an incrementally lower number of tickets available.

That being said, everyone clicking away at Ticketmaster this morning should be aware of bait and switch tactics that we were alerted to by a tipster. This story is pretty unbelievable, but the screen grabs are there to prove it.

A well-off friend of one of our readers happily plopped down over $900 for a single ticket in section 24B, Row 5 for Opening Day against the Indians. Apparently these tickets are directly above the visitors dugout and $900 was in his budget. More power to him. This is the ticketfast confirmation of the purchase:


Order confirmation number redacted for his safety

Excitedly, he clicked on the "pick up your tickets" link, but to his dismay he was shown that he was assigned a ticket in a different section. Suddenly, his ticket was no longer directly above the dugout, but in section 24, and four rows further back. Here is what currently shows up in his Ticketmaster order history:



Sadly, this isn't even the worst part of the story. Not about to let this go, the poor guy who dropped nearly a G, only to have his tickets switched went back into ticketmaster to investigate. He searched for similar tickets and found that Ticketmaster had the audacity to put his original seat back up for sale, and was now charging $2,625:



As we mentioned, this entire story is almost too far-fetched to believe. However, when following the progression with the screen grabs, it is apparent that all of this actually happened. It looks like Ticketmaster made some sort of error selling that original ticket as a single seat, or selling it for the $900 price. Instead of alerting the customer, they just decided to switch out his ticket and put them back for sale - for $1,600 more.

So, what is this guy supposed to do now? It is likely that he splurged for a $900 ticket because he would be on top of the dugout for the first game ever in the new Yankee Stadium. Now he is sitting in the ridiculously priced box seats all alone and not even where he wanted to sit. It is unlikely that Ticketmaster's useless customer service will understand this complicated situation, so an easy resolution is not in the cards. Can anyone offer suggestions on the next steps to take for this poor guy? Read the full post, after the jump