Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, ebay, entertainment, new york comic con, NYCC, stubhub, tickets

New York Comic Con Sells Out 3-Day Passes In Minutes As Scalpers Come To Town

Published Fri, 27 Jun 2014 17:00:19 -0500

This week, the tickets for New York Comic Con went on sale. And this is the year that New York became San Diego….

Response on Facebook was consistent…

And those tickets were, indeed up elsewhere fast. And expensive. A 3-Day pass for NYCC costs $65 cover price.

One frustrated ticket buyer told Bleeding Cool,

I waited in the queue since shortly after 12pm, finally was able to purchase tickets around 12:40pm, only to see 3-day tickets listed as "sold out" and resigned myself to getting a Saturday pass. On their FB page after many complaints, they insisted that 3-day tickets were still available, you had to refresh the ticket page. Worked for some and not others. I got back in the queue,

and after a bit they deleted their post on FB and replaced it with an official 3-day tickets sold out. Many tickets "available" on ebay and stubhub for inflated prices. Been going to NYCC since the beginning (never got in the first year because of the fire marshal, despite having a ticket), and this was by far the worst ticket-buying experience. Something is just not right here. Any help on bringing! the issue to light would be greatly appreciated.

So I did just that. I contacted Lance Fensterman of organisers Reed Expo. Who told Bleeding Cool,

Everything was largely due to demand for tickets. The registration site and queue slowed down dramatically because of the extreme traffic we were receiving requesting tickets. I am not pleased with the speed that the queue moved, but it was purely due to the heavy traffic.

Three day tickets sold out very quickly. Saturday's sold out after a couple of hours. As of this moment Thursday, Friday and Sunday tickets are still available.

We too are frustrated by the reselling of tickets at the inflated price. EBay has informed us there is nothing they can do about it. That leaves us to pursue each instance one by one. Which is obviously time-consuming. The point is we do not like it anymore than anyone else.

The fact is that tickets for New York Comic Con tickets are more popular than ever and we regret that because of that demand some of our most loyal fans are not getting tickets. We will look at alternative options going forward but the truth is when there is such demand and limited supply there are not enough tickets for everyone who wants one to get one.

I pointed out that it might not be considered the worst publicity for a comic convention to sell out so fast, especially when attracting attendees.

True, but I despise unhappy fans. I mean that very truly. We have to do better and strive to do better. However, the math says not everyone that wants a ticket is going to get one. That was one of the reasons we created Special Edition: NYC to give another opportunity to fans.

Which, according to reports, had ample space. This year. But in response to concern, we also have Vigilante posters, such as one William Power, writing,

Selling New York Comic Con Tickets on Ebay before 30 days from the Convention is a Violation of the Ebay's Rules & policies. So whoever bought tickets to sell on ebay will have to hold onto the tickets until mid Sept when the badges ship. I contacted Ebay to place a Violation against all Comic Con Tickets on the Ebay sight. I figure if all the people that ate up the tickets to resell will now have to sit on the tickets and wait a really long time to get their money back is a good lesson for them to learn. Another thing you can do is not buy your ticket on Ebay to teach these people a lesson. This is what happens when I get stuck online for over an hour and can't buy what I want because People need to ruin my Comic Con Dreams.

I had a nice talk with 4 people From EBAY. and let me tell you. Getting thru is not easy. But I pointed out their own polices and that selling Comic Con Tickets before you have them in hand is a Violation, and this pratice is wide spread. I was told this will be reviewed and Items that have already sold will be canceled. And money returned to buyers. I plan to follow up on this with Ebay weekly because I had such a lovely time waiting online only to miss out on getting my 3day badge.

Right now there are over eighty listings on eBay. We'll see what action eBay takes as the result of William and Lance's interventions….

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