Lost my PATIENCE – Take That concert ticket fiasco!

 

Ohhh the excitement of discovering that Take That would be appearing at the Riverside Stadium in the Boro (my hometown) in June 2019 AND supported by none other than Rick Astley!  Whooo!  The excitement was fuelled further by the discovery of the Take That Offical Store, which announced that anyone pre-ordering the new album ‘Odyssey’ would get a pre-sale code which would give fans the opportunity to purchase concert tickets, 48 hours before general release on Friday 28 September.  CD album was duly ordered and pre-sale code received.

Big sis was at her computer for 9.30am when ticket sales opened on See Tickets website, only to endure half an hour of hell as tickets disappeared from her basket, cheaper tickets selling out in milliseconds, getting more tickets in basket only for them to disappear again…and again….and again, then there was the unspecified error messages resulting in NO TICKETS!!!  And then it said the pre-sale code had already been used to buy tickets (it hadn’t).  Frustrated doesn’t even cover it.

So I tried a bit later, tickets were available, more expensive tickets but I managed to get them and managed to pay for them, which was a result.  Then I got the email ticket confirmation and was FUMING….a charge of £2.50 Transaction fee, which is fair enough but EIGHT POUNDS BLOODY FIFTY PENCE per ticket booking fee, when I’ve got to print the chuffing things out myself at home, using MY printer ink and paper, is a flaming cheek if you ask me!!! £34 for doing nothing, zilch, nada, barring increasing my blood pressure!

And then I have a look on Viagogo and all the greedy shits are on there already, selling the tickets they bought a few hours previously, at vastly inflated prices!  The most expensive tickets on See Tickets were £108 (which to be frank I think is ridiculous, especially when there was NO seating plan, therefore not even a hint of where the stage is going to be, to gauge what your view will be like from chosen seats!  Imagine paying £108 and still needing a set of binos to see the stage!  Anyhoo I digress, the tickets that were sold for between £60 and £108, were being resold for between £137 and £476 EACH on a Viagogo, which is pure greed and quite frankly, obscene, stopping genuine fans from getting their hands on tickets unless they’ve got more money than sense.

And I’ll place a bet that Ticketmaster will be selling Platinum tickets at over inflated prices too, come Friday (just as they did with Shawn Mendes Glasgow tickets) when tickets go on general sale, under the guise of best seats in the house which from experience is a load of bollix….been there, done that and learned the hard way that their idea of best seats in the house, differed considerably to mine!

Ed Sheeran got it right….he pulled out all the stops to stop this happening to fans and it’s about time more artists and promoters did the same.  In this day and age there should be some software program that can be used to locate tickets being resold on secondary sites for profit, cancel them and release them back on sale at face value, so that genuine fans have a fighting chance of getting tickets.  As for Viagogo, it needs to GOGO!!!

 

 

When is an OPTIONAL admin fee not optional?

The last time I checked the dictionary, the word ‘OPTIONAL’ meant voluntary, not compulsory, not mandatory….in other words “Left to one’s choice”.  Unless of course you are an Evans Halshaw franchised car dealer, in which case the word ‘OPTIONAL’  takes on a whole new meaning!

To cut a long story short, our family car was written off after some eejit thought our car was wearing an invisibility cloak and pulled straight into the side of us whilst travelling at 60mph.  Thankfully, no serious injuries to us or the other party but as our car was 10 years old, it was deemed uneconomical to repair and was duly written off by our insurance company.  We needed to find a new family car and fast so I was a woman on a mission.

We visited eleventy billion car dealerships, looked at eleventy trillion cars, after searching what felt like eleventy gazillion websites before finding the one car that would fit 3 teens and a dog in, comfortably and within budget.  We found the car at Evans Halshaw, the ‘UK’s leading automotive retailer’ and barely noticed the little white square sticker on the windscreen if I’m honest.  It certainly wasn’t brought to our attention after the test drive by the salesman but we did spot the sticker on other cars as we were leaving and had a cursory read of it.  I’ll be honest, I completely missed the bit that said ‘OPTIONAL’ and thought it was a ‘must have’ until later that evening and the only reason I checked, was because there is not ONE single solitary reference to this admin fee on Evans Halshaw’s website, which I thought was a bit strange.

Like hell was I going to pay £99 for a vehicle status check (basically a HPI check) when I could do it myself for the princely sum of £20, so when I rang the dealership the following morning to say we wanted the car and could put a deposit on it, the salesman gave me a total figure which included the £99 admin fee and I told him I didn’t want to pay it.   He clearly wasn’t accustomed to having this admin fee questioned or declined.  I had to ask if I HAD to pay the admin fee or was it optional.  He replied optional and blustered away.  £99 for nothing as don’t tell me they haven’t run a HPI check on them before they stick them on the forecourt.  So, I said “In that case, I choose not to pay it” and that’s when I was told they’d have to check with the Business Manager first!!!  So it’s not optional then??

Confused,  I rang Evans Halshaw head office and was told that whether the £99 admin fee was charged or not, was down to individual dealerships.  I rang Evans Halshaw, Cramlington and was told it was optional and I didn’t have to pay it.  Leeds told me it was optional too but that they ADVISED that it is paid.  So I was kind of armed with ammo by the time the salesman rang back.  Before saying Yay or Nay, he asked me did I want their servicing and MOT package?  NO.  Did I want their gap insurance?  NO.  Having exhausted himself trying and failing to get me to buy a vast array of over priced add ons, he told me that the Business Manager had agreed to waive the admin fee.  Whoopyflamingdoo!   That was big of him!  So basically I was made to jump thru’ hoops to get this bloody admin fee taken off my invoice, that was supposedly optional in the first place.

I have some advice for Evans Halshaw….if you want your customers to cover this £99 fee, then either add it onto the cost of the car on the forecourt/saleroom OR make the admin fee compulsory to all, advertise the fact that you charge it and have it highlighted on each vehicle advert, as some other used car companies too.  The whole optional/not optional experience has left a bitter taste in my mouth.  No one likes to feel that they are being ripped off and that, I’m afraid to say, that I feel that’s EXACTLY what is going on here.

Losing my mind over the Menopause!

I am officially IN the menopause as opposed to peri-menopausal (it’s all very confusing).  There was no fanfare to herald this new chapter of my life, just the non arrival of the dreaded monthly curse for 18 months.  Have I missed them?  Why, not likely!!

I seem, so far, to have missed the worst of the symptoms.  Yes, I’ve had the odd hot flush but thankfully seem to have missed out the night sweats (and in the case of a friend, day sweats too) which I’m very grateful for.  My hair has gone thinner, but then I never had thick hair in the first place so I can’t say it’s very noticeable.  I try to combat the thin-ness by using Plantur 39 shampoo which I have to say, is the ONLY shampoo I’ve been able to use for the last year or so, that doesn’t make my hair feel and look like straw.

There are only two flies in my menopausal ointment……the first is the worst I think.  The testosterone fuelled chin hairs….well, I say chin hairs, it’s more like a full on beard and the moustache ain’t bad either.  I’d give Michael Finnegan a run for his money and I’m pretty sure if I gave up on the waxing and plucking, I could don a red suit at Christmas and make a rather convincing Santa.  Ho Ho Ho.

Secondly, my brain seems to have done a runner, altho’ some will argue it was never there to begin with.  For example, most of the time I have absolutely no idea what is going to come out of my mouth.  Usually it’s something completely different to what I had planned to say, it’s like the wiring between my brain and mouth has short circuited. It mixes words up to make new ones….’par cark’ (Car park) is just one of MANY examples I could give.  It’s embarassing.  But not as embarassing as not being able to remember the name of an object, name or place when you are mid conversation and end up saying things like ‘thingy’, ‘whatsit’ or ‘Ermmmm Ermmmmm”etc etc.  I come across as really intelligent….not!!!

And then there’s the memory loss.  I swear to God, some days I think I’m starting with Alzheimer’s.  I can remember the lyrics to nigh on every song I liked in the 80’s teenage years,  I can remember the name of every holiday hotel and resort I’ve stayed in since 1971, yet I can walk into the kitchen and have absolutely NO idea what I’ve gone in there for.  I look around helplessly asking myself “What did I come in here for…..What did I come in here for”?  Sometimes I remember but most of the time I don’t, I walk out again and 5 minutes later I remember I was going to check the calendar or some such.

And don’t get me started on talking to myself….I have blown conversations AND arguments with no one but me.  Worst thing is talking to myself in the supermarket “Right, I need bread….where’s the bread aisle”?   I know I’m doing it, God knows I try hard not to do it, but sometimes it just slips out AND those bloody self serve tills don’t help in the slightest.  How many times I’ve had an argument with the damned things “I HAVE put the bloody bottle in the bagging area, for God’s sake” although I did have the wind taking out my sails a few weeks back in Poundland, when the self serve till started talking to me as Elvis.  I shit you not.

Anyhoo, I’ve decided that women get the shitty end of the stick and next time,  I’m coming back as a man……or a dog!