I understand that writing distributed applications over the web is hard. And that Javascript is a mess sometimes. But I would think that for the 25% surcharge on every order, Ticketmaster could afford to hire a programmer or two that could get it right.
I just failed to purchase tickets in both Safari and Firefox. Their server returned a curt error message saying “There are problems with your submission: Please select a state.”
How silly of me to forget to select a state. Let me try again.
Huh? There's no frakkin’ input for the state! Maybe they want me to type the state along with the city, as in “Bronx, NY.” That might actually be kind of progressive; I loathe those drop-downs with more than 8 or 10 choices. Scrolling drop-downs should be banned outright.
Nope, “city, state” doesn't work, and this time the error was that I “exceeded my time limit” and my tickets were released.
View source. Looks like they're doing some fancy magic Javashit to fill in the state drop-down based on the country selection. But the country box is filled in for me already, and disabled.
I made sure Javascript itself is enabled. I tried again in Firefox. I dutifully typed in all my details again. Same error: no state.
I guess I'll have to phone, but I'm already pissed over all these fees and frustration. I'd much rather buy directly from the box office, but they're only open 12–4 on odd Tuesdays. Or some such. Screw you and your ‘convenience’ fee, Ticketmaster.
Whee, my first ’brant™ (web rant). I feel somewhat better. I'll feel even better if this post ever makes it to page one when someone googles Ticketmaster. :)
15 June update: after cooler-headed investigation, it looks like turning off Javascript may do the trick. None of their buggy code gets a chance to run, and the state drop-down is present in the plain HTML. Still, I'd rather work-around Ticketmaster if possible…
16 June update: I sent customer service the URL of this post as soon as it was published, and today it seems like the state drop-down has reappeared. I wish I had saved the page source last time, so I could diff it. Also, Art said that last night TM wasn't allowing online purchase at all when he tried, so he phoned instead.
