As members of the press, myself, our editor-in-chief Keith Mitchell and my fellow Senior Editor, Elizabeth Lotto all received our press passes to New York Comic Con 2015 with little issue. While I can be happy about that, there is something that has bothered me about the ticket release for New York Comic Con, ever since they implemented this multi-pronged approach to ticket sales for the convention.
I have friends and associates who attend New York Comic Con on the regular, and while in previous years they were easy to access through the site, in 2014, ReedPop committed what I personally call a cardinal sin of ticket sales…not anticipating demand. Last year, the same issue reared its ugly head, as people bombarded the site at 12pm EST for tickets, quickly snapping up the three and four-day passes (albeit at lower prices this time last year,) while the servers crashed on several different occasions, knocking people out of queued spots, crashing when people got the chance to buy their tickets, and many more.
Add to the debacle the limited amount of tickets made available for purchase at Midtown Comics (at a currently undisclosed date,) and at Special Edition NYC this June, and you have a mad dash for tickets, and scalpers who take advantage of this bullsh*t. This is garbage, and ReedPop knows this.
Friends of mine have complained about this (particularly the online system) on Facebook:
in queue since 12, got the purchase page at 12:05, selected my tix at 12:06 and have been getting 408 errors ever since. Good Shit nycc
– Devin Harris
“Welcome to the NYCC 2015 virtual queue!
Because NYCC tickets are in such high demand, we’ve created this queue to make sure your ticket buying experience is as painless as possible. Once it’s your turn, you will automatically be brought to the ticketing system to purchase your tickets. Remember, there’s a limited time frame available once you’ve made it to the front, so be sure to have your credit card info handy.
Get ready – this page will automatically take you to the NYCC ticketing system when it’s your turn to purchase tickets!”
This is the worst possible system I’ve ever seen.
– Sean McKendry, Ani U Magazine
This is not good, especially since you get situations like this, courtesy of Christopher Edwards:
This can’t be serious! $1012.50 for ONE Ultimate Access Pass, which was only $525 to begin with? This is not funny, not funny at all, especially since everything but Thursday passes are sold out.
As you can probably tell, I’m quite upset about this, because this restricts people who actually have saved up for New York Comic Con, and end up going through scalpers on eBay and StubHub for their tickets, which can be nullified by ReedPop once they find out they have been scalped.
Obviously, the scalpers make a hefty profit (or their money back,) but those who end up buying the scalped passes get screwed like the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl 49 after that terrible play call.
In all honesty, it’s not acceptable or tolerable when a system is in place that prevents genuine fans of the geek culture from being able to enjoy what makes their lives interesting. It’s downright despicable, and ReedPop needs to acknowledge this problem.
That being said, I will not implore a boycott, and I will not forego my press access to this event, at least not for this year. However, if this continues, and ReedPop doesn’t learn from their mistakes, I’ll have to consider foregoing New York Comic Con 2016 in favor of Youmacon 2016.
P.S: Please refer any ticket scalping to NYCC staff. According to the NYCC ticket FAQ:
If we determine that you are ordering under different names and multiple addresses, all of your orders will be cancelled immediately. Any and all scalpers that are identified will have their order(s) canceled and Ticket(s) voided.
