Words

A bad experience with Sistic (again)

Sistic is a pretty decent ticketing agent on most days, but its biggest failing is its ability to crash every single time popular concerts go on sale.

Part of the problem is traffic, and part of it is simply poor design. The fact that it doesn’t allow patrons to choose seats results in additional load as people try to add and drop seats offers to try and find an allocation they like.

This morning, while undergoing my misery of purchasing tickets to 羅志祥 Show Luo’s upcoming concert, I tried hard to recall a time where I had a smooth experience during a launch. Never. You can count on Sistic–count on internet booking to completely fark up, count on phonelines to jam, count on Sistic outlets to say “We’re having problems. Why don’t you come back later?”.

The worst experience, by far, I’ve had was with 五月天[JUMP 離開地球表面] 新加坡演唱會2007 (Mayday’s Jump 2007 Concert)

It was decided that there would be an exclusive priority sale at Sistic’s IMM branch on 16 March, noon, to coincide with Mayday’s promotional appearance at the mall that night. So I went down during lunch hour and found a rather long queue of 50-odd people. I wasn’t too concerned though, it’s kinda like the cinema queue which moves pretty fast, right?

But wait, I forgot the axiom that Sistic always crashes.

So how long before we got our tickets? 6 hours. It took three shifts beginning with me, followed by ZC (he was cold, hungry and dizzy after the many hours he suffered) and then W (who had to rush down from Tampines) to reach the head of the line. It’s puzzling how the system can still be unstable when there’s only one outlet doing the sale.

Then, there was 蔡依林 Jolin’s concert in April in which J had wait around their Jurong point outlet as they try to recover the system. Thanks to her, we got the most fantastic seats though. Front row!

Back to today’s experience:

You know it’s a bad start when..

1. Cat 1 seats are gone so early.
2. The system lets you in before 9am! What the- ?

Things kinda went downhill from there. Every step of the way. :(

There were times when my shopping basket would alternate between being empty and shockingly…

And when you try to proceed with anything, I love the error message: “Sorry your session has expired and your seats have been released. Please open a new browser and try again.”

My session expired cos of your slow ass system! Roar!