Taylor Swift performing live. Photo Credit: Ronald Woan
On the heels of the much-publicized stateside Eras Tour presale debacle, Ticketmaster has abruptly paused the sale of passes to multiple Taylor Swift concerts in France.
Live Nation’s Ticketmaster took to social media to inform fired-up Swifties of the news – albeit without offering a precise explanation for the hangup out of the gate. Subsequently, the company formally disclosed that the sale was “postponed and tickets are still available,” chalking up the situation to “an issue with a third-party vendor who is working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”
“Fans previously selected to participate in the on-sale will be notified directly of the new on-sale date and time,” Ticketmaster France clarified just moments ago, per a translation of the French message.
Before this much-anticipated update, Ticketmaster France appeared to touch upon ticketing technical difficulties surrounding the relevant Eras Tour performances – among them a pair of additional gigs in France, announced last week along with 12 other dates in Europe – yesterday afternoon. According to one message, the entity called on fans to have a “little patience” as it prepared to send out the associated access codes and links.
Each of these codes/links was expected to afford recipients access to tickets for certain of the singer-songwriter’s stops in France. At 9 AM local time this morning, for instance, those with codes would have had a chance to buy passes to Swift’s May 9th and 10th concerts in Paris, with tickets to shows on the 11th and 12th (also in Paris) having been set to go on sale at 11 AM, per Ticketmaster France’s website.
Lastly, passes to Swift’s June 2nd and 3rd performances in Lyon had been poised to go on sale at 1 PM until the obstacles at hand derailed the plans.
“The Taylor Swift sale | The 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Eras Tour for Paris La Défense Arena has been put on hold,” Ticketmaster France wrote in a tweet that’s garnered an astonishing 2.4 million views. “We will keep you posted with a new on-sale time as soon as possible. All codes not already used will remain valid.”
(In an effort to assuage the frustration of a fed-up fan who had entered but not checked out with a code, AEG Presents France drove home that “if your purchase was unsuccessful, your code remains valid.”)
Bearing in mind the demand behind the financially successful tour – and the unprecedented outrage that erupted after the initially highlighted presale fiasco in the States – it goes without saying that would-be Eras Tour attendees are less than thrilled with the situation.
And while time will tell exactly how Ticketmaster proceeds, Swifties aren’t hesitating to describe their far-from-ideal experiences at length.
“I waited in line for an hour,” one individual explained, per Google’s translation. “29k people in front of me, when my turn finally comes, I select my place but cannot connect. Result: back to square one, in the queue, with 770k people in front of me.”
“We did everything right, we took our tickets, they were in the basket, we were connected BEFORE on your site and your technical errors prevented us from buying our tickets!” vented another prospective customer.