At noon cst, on the White Sox website, there will be face value White Sox home World Series games will be on sale. For those that dont know, tickets that have already been purchased are being resold between 5-10 thousand per ticket here in Chicago. It is a first come first serve basis and will sell out quickly but if you are fortunate enough to get some you can purchase up to 8 tickets. Buy a ticket face between 125-185 and resale online depending on what tickets you get up to 10k is a great opportunity. Just wanted to pass it along!
A little monkey wrench for out-of-towners. I don't think they will mail tickets. They do e-tickets, but how do you resell those? Other option is will-call and you have to personally pick them up this week. Might be a problem for non-locals. WEll, I'm gonna give it a go in a few minutes. Will try for Game 6.
Some people would probably buy those print-at-home tickets. There will probably be a lot of scams going on with people having print at home tickets selling copies to dozens of different people. Then when they all show up at the stadium, only the first people who use the tickets with those particular barcodes get in. It could be a huge mess for MLB. Why won't they send the tickets by UPS or FedEx?
good article...
Desk phone in the left hand, cell phone in the right, computer screen keyed into whitesox.com.
The mad electronic dash for World Series tickets is moments from its High Noon start.
And already I know I'm overmatched.
No clue on how to use the phone's automatic redial. No prayer of doing my own troubleshooting if the computer balks. No partners backing me up.
But this is no time to be one of those negative media types. Must think positive. Two teenage boys at home are counting on me.
<LINK href="http://www.suntimes.com/templates/css/main.css" rel=stylesheet>
A World Series in Chicago. Who knows if there will be another in our lifetimes? And this is the only chance to see it at a semi-reasonable price.
So dial, dial, dial. Click that mouse. Typety-type-type.
At that very moment, half the people in the Chicago area and thousands beyond are doing the very same thing, all of them chasing the same scant few thousand tickets, a numbers game for fools.
But don't worry. Somebody has to get lucky. Might as well be you.
You get the screen that asks you to pick one of the four home games at U.S. Cellular Field. Hadn't thought about that. Which one? Everybody will want Game One and Two, because those are the only sure things.
But you want a sure thing, too, so you pick Game Two. You click on it. The Game Two screen appears but won't give you the box to select how many tickets you want. You panic. You click the wrong button and find yourself back at square one.
OK, let's try Game Six, not a sure thing, but a good possibility. The next screen pops up. Great. Try four tickets. Best available.
<!--startsubhead-->Battling 'verification' feature
The Ticketmaster Web site asks for "word verification," a security feature that is supposed to beat the cyber-geeks. But you can't see the password, and when you click on the help message, the screen goes blank.
It's already 12:09. Time's a-wasting. But you remember the warning that if you refresh the screen you go to the back of the line, so you sit tight.
All the while, you're working the phones, dialing hundreds of times. You figure out how to dial the desk phone with the left hand by using the speaker button, while using the right hand to work the redial feature on the cell phone, a different phone number for each. All this does is give you a busy signal in both ears.
At 12:14, the computer has more bad news: "A connection failure has occurred." You start over.
It's the word verification page again. You can't see the password. It says you can solve the problem by hitting refresh or checking whether your computer is installed with the latest version of Internet Aggravator 6.0 or some such thing.
You opt for refresh. Now you can see only the top half of the word. It looks like: Luddite. It is Luddite. Very funny, those cyber-geeks.
It's 12:16. Finally, you're in. "Your wait time is approximately 7 minutes," the screen says. A minute later the waiting time is eight minutes. Another minute and the screen goes blank.
<!--startsubhead-->Nine little words
Your attention returns to the phones, and you realize you've been listening to the busy signals. Not helpful.
But wait a minute! Is it ringing? Yes!
"We're sorry. All circuits are busy."
At 12:23, another "connection failure has occurred." You start over.
You know the tickets are gone by now, but you're not quitting without confirmation.
The phone rings again at 12:35. It answers with a screech. "We're sorry. All circuits ..."
You're looking at a blank computer screen again. Another connection failure.
At 12:43, you finally get the order screen. Now it's offering only single tickets. You ask for the single ticket, which feels a lot like begging. This time the password is easy to read: "Pigeon." You feel like one.
Finally, the computer tells you what you've known all along:
"There were no tickets available that matched your request."
They are the nine words that will break many a Chicago heart this day.
I'm merely disappointed. My kids are young. The Sox will be back, and maybe by then the kids will be rich lawyers or businessmen who can afford season tickets and will offer a World Series seat to their doddering old man.
We learn later that the tickets sold out in 18 minutes. It's unclear how many were actually for sale.
Did some good fans get squeezed out in the process? Undoubtedly.
Is there a better way? I'm not sure what it would be.
Many realSox fans surely would have preferred to stand in line overnight than mess with a computer, but that's a limited group, too, and then you'd have to deal with the legalized ticket scalpers paying straw buyers to stand in line for them. Look on the bright side: Televisions are a lot better than they were in 1959.
Desk phone in the left hand, cell phone in the right, computer screen keyed into whitesox.com.
The mad electronic dash for World Series tickets is moments from its High Noon start.
And already I know I'm overmatched.
No clue on how to use the phone's automatic redial. No prayer of doing my own troubleshooting if the computer balks. No partners backing me up.
But this is no time to be one of those negative media types. Must think positive. Two teenage boys at home are counting on me.
<LINK href="http://www.suntimes.com/templates/css/main.css" rel=stylesheet>
A World Series in Chicago. Who knows if there will be another in our lifetimes? And this is the only chance to see it at a semi-reasonable price.
So dial, dial, dial. Click that mouse. Typety-type-type.
At that very moment, half the people in the Chicago area and thousands beyond are doing the very same thing, all of them chasing the same scant few thousand tickets, a numbers game for fools.
But don't worry. Somebody has to get lucky. Might as well be you.
You get the screen that asks you to pick one of the four home games at U.S. Cellular Field. Hadn't thought about that. Which one? Everybody will want Game One and Two, because those are the only sure things.
But you want a sure thing, too, so you pick Game Two. You click on it. The Game Two screen appears but won't give you the box to select how many tickets you want. You panic. You click the wrong button and find yourself back at square one.
OK, let's try Game Six, not a sure thing, but a good possibility. The next screen pops up. Great. Try four tickets. Best available.
<!--startsubhead-->Battling 'verification' feature
The Ticketmaster Web site asks for "word verification," a security feature that is supposed to beat the cyber-geeks. But you can't see the password, and when you click on the help message, the screen goes blank.
It's already 12:09. Time's a-wasting. But you remember the warning that if you refresh the screen you go to the back of the line, so you sit tight.
All the while, you're working the phones, dialing hundreds of times. You figure out how to dial the desk phone with the left hand by using the speaker button, while using the right hand to work the redial feature on the cell phone, a different phone number for each. All this does is give you a busy signal in both ears.
At 12:14, the computer has more bad news: "A connection failure has occurred." You start over.
It's the word verification page again. You can't see the password. It says you can solve the problem by hitting refresh or checking whether your computer is installed with the latest version of Internet Aggravator 6.0 or some such thing.
You opt for refresh. Now you can see only the top half of the word. It looks like: Luddite. It is Luddite. Very funny, those cyber-geeks.
It's 12:16. Finally, you're in. "Your wait time is approximately 7 minutes," the screen says. A minute later the waiting time is eight minutes. Another minute and the screen goes blank.
<!--startsubhead-->Nine little words
Your attention returns to the phones, and you realize you've been listening to the busy signals. Not helpful.
But wait a minute! Is it ringing? Yes!
"We're sorry. All circuits are busy."
At 12:23, another "connection failure has occurred." You start over.
You know the tickets are gone by now, but you're not quitting without confirmation.
The phone rings again at 12:35. It answers with a screech. "We're sorry. All circuits ..."
You're looking at a blank computer screen again. Another connection failure.
At 12:43, you finally get the order screen. Now it's offering only single tickets. You ask for the single ticket, which feels a lot like begging. This time the password is easy to read: "Pigeon." You feel like one.
Finally, the computer tells you what you've known all along:
"There were no tickets available that matched your request."
They are the nine words that will break many a Chicago heart this day.
I'm merely disappointed. My kids are young. The Sox will be back, and maybe by then the kids will be rich lawyers or businessmen who can afford season tickets and will offer a World Series seat to their doddering old man.
We learn later that the tickets sold out in 18 minutes. It's unclear how many were actually for sale.
Did some good fans get squeezed out in the process? Undoubtedly.
Is there a better way? I'm not sure what it would be.
Many realSox fans surely would have preferred to stand in line overnight than mess with a computer, but that's a limited group, too, and then you'd have to deal with the legalized ticket scalpers paying straw buyers to stand in line for them. Look on the bright side: Televisions are a lot better than they were in 1959.
