@HarrisonHood said:

@WeekapaugKrol said:

I have had great success on CoT as a buyer and as a seller. I am still a Gold member (Oh behave) and have no problem continuing to be one.

There have been a lot of great posts on this thread and many great ideas. This new charge by CoT is not one of them though.

I have never bought tickets through CoT and felt like I was going to be ripped off, or even that if I was ripped off that they wouldn't have my back. They are usually responsive and helpful with issues. Buying and selling is always a breeze and Face value really is face value on there. I am very glad that they are around as if they weren't I would be forced to go to Stubhub (more fees) or Craigslist (Zero Protection) to look for tickets.

That being said, this is a cash grab move. I don't need more protection and I should at least have the choice if I want to pay for it or not. I'd almost rather they come out and say look we aren't making enough money to support the site and we need to charge fees. The whole non gold member get charged more is a blatant we want your money for gold memberships move that the whole protection crap is just a facade. The fees + face value will still be less then the markup on stubhub plus fees so all in all it will still be the best way to get the cheapest tickets for shows. (Yes high demand tickets are a crapshoot, some people just don't understand supply and demand....if there is no supply and high demand, there is a good chance you need to poney up and get off of CoT because the sellers can make a boatload more money selling on Stubhub. That's why when the 1 Mohegan ticket goes on sale it's nearly impossible to get with 300 people going for the one ticket).

CoT gets a lot of heat and I understand why. It definitely brings out hoarders more but hoarders eventually sell those tickets or eat the costs and that falls on them. But CoT has also provided me with unbelievable experiences. I have traded seats for floors and boogied on down, and traded floors for seats and provided my friends and I some amazing seats. I have sold tickets I couldn't go to for face and helped other fans get face value tickets when they could have been turned to StubHub fees. I have bought tickets to shows that were tough to get into, or easy to get in to...all in all CoT is a valued site in my mind, this move really sucks and is a lie to its users but hey, where else will you find an opportunity to get face value tickets?

you can trade, buy or sell face value tickets in like a million threads on here & facebook groups
I get that they will sell the tickets eventually. The problem with that is when they do the only people that can use them have travled to the show without tickets. Most of us have lives and can drop everything to fly to show somewhere even if we would have made a plan and done so with 3-6 months notice.
I don't solely blame ticket hoarding for why I don't have tickets to see one of the two shows in my home state this summer but I know its contributing factor. I know it because people are engineering trades for dicks field tickets right now on cash or trade with them.
If you are upgrading seats with cash or trade you are part of the problem. Honestly, I'm going to keep defending buying tickets on stub hub till people stop with the 7-way trades and seat upgrades. We can't control what StubHub does or Ticketmaster does but we can influence each other. with all this seat upgrading and 7-way trading don't get mad when phish sells more "platinum seats" they are the originators of value in this equation and are entitled to capture it.

If your way of getting tickets in hand 3-6 months advance of whatever show you want is StubHub and that works best for you, by all means, do you. Everyone has a motive, whether it's parlaying tickets you have in hand to get you on the floor or if it's simply just getting into the show to rage with your crew. We all have needs and we do our best to meet em'. Personally, if you're working a 7 way trade to get to the floor and moving a bunch of tickets and it works out for you, more power to you. If you're fine spending $150 on stubhub for a seat that went for $85 (face+fees) to the seller, good for you I guess. As you mentioned above, there are several (like a million) avenues to get tickets, you don't like CoT? there are like 999,999 more ways to get a ticket.

And at the end of the day, if each ticket that has exchanged hands through trades/sales/miracles gets used, and someone has a good time because of it. What does it matter how it was procured?