Were you one of the thousands of people frantically pressing the refreshing button on your laptops on Sunday morning, eagerly trying to get your hands on the most sought after of summer festival tickets – Glastonbury 2011? I know I was. I’ve been going to Glastonbury every year I’ve been able to since 1999 – there was only one year that I didn’t attend through choice, and I got really grumpy for that whole weekend at the end of June. Even if you don’t go to the festival, it’s pretty difficult to evade the media coverage of it, as they proudly show off how amazing the festival is to all those who were unable to get tickets. It’s even more annoying if the year that you’re not there turns out to be one of the elusive “hot and sunny” years.I didn’t get tickets on Sunday, but it was mainly my own fault. I didn’t plan ahead. I didn’t get my registration details in advance. I didn’t liase with my friends to ensure we would all try and get tickets for each other. And worst of all – I didn’t have a computer in my flat. This meant I was resigned to trying to buy tickets on the web using my iPhone. It didn’t work, and I didn’t get a ticket.
As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one. And those left feeling disappointed have turned to Review Centre to voice their feelings about the ticket agency put in charge of selling Glastonbury tickets, See Tickets. A selection of these reviews can be seen below:
I got to the payment details at least 6 times and every time i summitted it it just crashed and gave an error message. Just seems that see tickets IT department needs a right royal kick up the backside. More than anything the contract for sale should be removed for future years
Like other disappointed Glasto triers I had the same demoralising experience.
Spent and hour and a half hitting ‘proceed’ to get to the payment page having spent two hours getting past the other obstacles. Only let me through when sold out.
The queuing software should be binned.
Website is a joke. Started at 8:50, managed to get to ‘in a queue’ screen at 11:00, after 1hr of re-sending request managed to get to “enter reg details’ screen. Another 1hr of resends and managed the ‘confirm address’ screen, another 30 mins of resends and got to payment screen… SOLD OUT. What a joke.
2 phones, 2 laptops. Over 2000 calls made between 8.45am and 1.15pm when they sold out. Busy every single time. Joke. I estimate to over 50,000 refreshes on both laptops with multiple tabs and pages being refreshed every few seconds. The only message I ever got was at 1.15 when it let me know it was sold out.
tried to buy glasto tickets, 2 laptops, 3 phones and an ipod touch, battered it for over 4 hours, not even close, didn’t get to any sort of queue, absolute waste of time
so i rang my sister who lives in manchester (me being in london) she tells me she is in the queue and she will get me tickets if she gets through, I get a call back 10 minutes later saying “IV GOT THE TICKETS’. yay but what a hassle, it ended up that my sister managed to get all our tickets all 8 of us, with her paying for all the deposits
See tickstes dont think its worth improving the service as they know all the tickest will be sold and they will get paid but I think they should make some sort of effort to at least give everyone a fighting chance. (sic)
Disastrous, useless service and a waste of many thousands of potential Glastonbury goers times. So disappointed. Will boycott in the future
Every year i am shocked by how bad see tickets is when it comes to glastonbury but this year i am speechless, after spending over 4 hours trying to get tickets for glastonbury i was unsuccessful along with over 30 different friends. We have been going for the last 5 years and i cant believe that not a single person i know from the london area has been successful.
so last year, we struggled for hours to get glasto tickets, and thought, wow seetickets is a terrible site, but they’ll improve for next year, they’re not that stupid. Wait a second, they are. 5hours and no tickets, couldn’t even access the site.
I agree that they they should think about upgrading their technology, but it’s the sheer volume of people trying to get tickets that causes the problem – even if their servers could handle all requests, then it would still come down to a lottery as the first 177,000 who push the refresh button as close to 9am as possible would all get tickets, and they would sell out in minutes rather than hours. The solution I see as being the most fair would be to start selling tickets in physical box offices only, and selling tickets on a first-come, first serve basis, so if you really wanted tickets then you’d have to camp out in front of the box office weeks in advance. I’m kinda glad they haven’t gone down that route so far. Still, at least we have a possible resale next year to look forward to.
Read more See Tickets reviews here, as well as other ticket agency reviews here.
I genuinely feel for the people who didnt get tickets – and while im glad i got tickets, if i hadnt i would have been very angry. But the reason im posting is that a few of my mates from different parts of Ireland all got tickets within 10 – 15 mins of them going on sale on Sunday……it just makes me wonder does it depend on server capacity within the country also – i dunno. just a thought.
@donncha yep – it’s interesting tha quite a few people seem to suggest that it was difficult getting through if you were in London – maybe it is all to do with server capacity where you live. Bit unfair if it’s all down to that though!
@jonny, Glasto won’t be the same without you. Where is the reward for long standing loyalty?
lots more people want tickets than there are tickets. pretty simple, lets not start with the “its not fair” stuff
mehh loyalty. whatever
And so,
after failing last year in october to get tickets this year, i again woke up early on sunday before i had to go to work to try and get a ticket.
for an hour and half i waited and waited in that sodding holding area! however i never made it through to any purchase pages. i had friends trying to get tickets for me and some of those did get through to the purchase page but it threw them off.
I’m coming to accept i just won’t be going this year and i’m so disappointed. i understand that there is such a huge demand for the limited tickets but the way the process happens is completely unfair.
I know some people who started to get a ticket at 11:00am in october and they got through. why should they get through when i and others have been trying since before 9:00am!
it’s down to pure luck and it’s so disappointing when it doesn’t happen. i can never get through on the phones so what else is there that can happen.
I think box offices are a good idea, or having several ticket websites selling tickets.
does anyone know why they solely use seetickets? i’ve had a few bad experiences with seetickets on other occasions and i have a low opinion of how they run their company,website and their customer services.
Think all the comments have pretty much said it all.
I similarly had the same awful 4 hours in October and another hour in April, for just more stress and then more disappointment.
We live near Glastonbury and can’t get tickets. I’m going to have to leave the country in June, cos it’ll just be rubbing my nose in it.
We had an idea that maybe cities had better, faster, internet links. But this doesn’t seem to be the case.
I wrote to the festival office asking if they would check the geographic sale of tickets, to see if there were any trends. They said it was evenly spread.
So, hey! What can you do.
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I am selling one weekend ticket for glasto as my friends didn’t get a ticket. Photo on there, female brunette 21. Contact me if interested!
K – do you still have the ticket? I need one desperately!