Item — HN Reader

> At some point, you have to cut off previous technologies because virtually everyone's moved to something better.

I don't agree that it's better. Why should I have to worry about my ticket running out of battery power or being such a high-value pickpocket target once I'm already in the venue?

The latter is a huge issue at music festivals for example:

- https://old.reddit.com/r/OutsideLands/search/?q=phone+stolen...

- https://old.reddit.com/r/electricdaisycarnival/search/?q=pho...

- https://old.reddit.com/r/coachella/search/?q=phone+stolen&in...

Can't just leave it at home if you need it to get in to the thing.

3 comments

I'm not a fan of the "something better" phrasing myself. It's very much anti-systems-thinking.

Engineers should be honest that everything is a tradeoff. For the up-front convenience you get with phone tickets, you impose additional failure modes, dependency chains, and accessibility issues that simply weren't a problem with paper ticketing.

The "phone-ification" of everything will probably bite us in the behind in the future, just like the buildout of out car-centric environments does now.

>For the up-front convenience you get with phone tickets

Even as a person who does have a smartphone, I feel like phone tickets are anti-convenience because they rely on terrible apps like TicketMaster. It's only a positive trade-off for venues or whoever. If they texted or emailed me a QR code, that would be a positive tradeoff (and a texted QR code would probably work for this guy's flip phone too)

> I feel like phone tickets are anti-convenience because they rely on terrible apps like TicketMaster.

Case in point: I traveled from St. Louis to Houston for a concert a few years ago. Before I left home to catch my flight, I installed the Ticketmaster app on a phone and verified that I could bring up the tickets. When I tried it again in my hotel an hour before the conference, it no longer worked because the fraud detection in their app was apparently confused as to why I was now in Houston.

Fixing this took 45 minutes on hold to get a support agent and a frantic call to my wife so she could check the disused email address I used to sign up for Ticketmaster 20 years earlier and get the verification code they sent.

There are a lot of reasons to dislike digital tickets, but this is one of them. I used to go to dozens of concerts every year. Now it's such a hassle that I don't bother unless it's small venue that doesn't play these games.

That's fucking nightmarish. That's exactly the kind of scenario I'd think up and be told is "science fiction" by the kind of apologists who think forced usage of technology is okay.

We attended a once-in-a-lifetime show last fall (a performer who is aging and likely won't tour again) a two hour drive away. I wouldn't install the Ticketmaster app and played an old man "character" with the box office to get them to print my tickets and hold them at will call. I played the "we are driving in from out of town" card, etc, and they accommodated me.

I tried that with a closer venue a couple of months ago and got told, in no uncertain terms, "no app no admittance". I knuckled-under and loaded the app on my wife's iPhone (which she insists on keeping because Stockholm syndrome, I assume). I feel bad that I gave in (because it makes me part of the problem). I really wanted to see the show and I wasn't willing to forego it on principle. (Kinda embarrassing, actually.)

> That's fucking nightmarish. That's exactly the kind of scenario I'd think up and be told is "science fiction" by the kind of apologists who think forced usage of technology is okay.

Not to justify it, but we've been fighting this kind of crap for a long time with credit cards and their bonehead "anti-fraud" checks. I'm often on the phone with my credit card issuers every time I travel somewhere because their moronic systems think "different country = fraud" and lock me out until I call them and perform their pointless rituals for them over the phone. Even if you tell them in advance that you're traveling (which I object to because my vacation plans are none of their business), they still often get it wrong and flag you.

Why would you sign into Ticketmaster with an email address you don't have access to and use it to buy tickets?

Don't do that. Create a new account with the email address you have access to.

Apps require you to sign in again all the time, and send a verification code to your e-mail to do so. Changing locations is, yes, a reason to require sign in.

Sorry, but that one's on you.

> Why would you sign into Ticketmaster with an email address you don't have access to and use it to buy tickets?

Because in the context of signing in, its role is that of a user ID.

Ticketmaster spams that address constantly. It's a valid email address, to be sure, but they've trained me over the years never to look at it. They certainly didn't do any multi-factor authentication when I bought the tickets, only when I was preparing to use them (despite having accessed them on that very device two days earlier).

I have a Ticketmaster account. I just unsubscribed from the marketing emails. It's easy. No more spam.

Ticketmaster failing to recognize that someone might want to use a ticket in physical proximity to the event is not the user's fault.

Exactly. Ostensibly, one would assume that getting closer to the place you have a ticket for wouldn't flag the use as "suspicious". To have OP demand that everyone use the app, but then blame the user for... traveling to the venue? Wild.

> Apps require you to sign in again all the time, and send a verification code to your e-mail to do so. Changing locations is, yes, a reason to require sign in.

This is the bane of my existence. I manually copy/paste/delete a half-dozen codes from my email/SMS every single day.

If I was ruler, I'd mandate every one of these switch to TOTP 2FA and outright ban email verification other than for password resets.

>Apps require you to sign in again all the time, and send a verification code to your e-mail to do so. Changing locations is, yes, a reason to require sign in.

What? TicketMaster is the only app I use that does this. Probably because it's too hard for end-users to get rid of it. If some Telegram or some food delivery app or something tried to periodically re-prompt me to log in because I went outside my house or whatever, it would get uninstalled and replaced with something that didn't.

Don't victim-blame.

This is how I feel with the places that want to lock up your phone. There are safety considerations in that. But we're just astrotrufed into the "well this is better" PR campaigns from yondr.

They caught organized outside groups stealing phones from people at these events: https://abc7chicago.com/post/lollapalooza-stolen-cell-phones...

In most cases, digital event tickets are a QR code which is just an alphanumerical code. You can easily print them, so you don't have to worry about your phone.

I've never seen digital tickets which aren't printable.

> I've never seen digital tickets which aren't printable.

Here you go; now you have: https://help.ticketmaster.com/hc/en-us/articles/265843090383...