iTunes Ticket Promotion Backfires
Those who pre-ordered the Red Hot Chili Peppers' new album through a joint promotion between iTunes and Ticketmaster should have received an e-mail with a concert ticket presale code Monday. But for some, that e-mail never came.
In the iTunes Music Store, Apple said those who pre-ordered the album "Stadium Arcadium" were to receive special videos along with a presale code which would allow them to buy concert tickets a full four days ahead of the general public.
However, it became clear on Apple's support forums that the e-mails were not arriving by Monday evening. By the end of the day many had not received the code, or received a blank e-mail from iTunes with no message body.
"I don't have my code yet either," a disgruntled fan who posted under the name "RoseTintMyWrld19" wrote late Monday. "This is the whole reason I pre-ordered Stadium Arcadium in the first place. Will someone at Apple please give us a shout? It would be much appreciated."
Customers also reported that Apple itself was in the dark, only saying that it expected the codes to be released sometime Monday. It wasn't until sometime Tuesday morning that Apple phone support representatives began to manually send out Ticketmaster codes to those calling in to reporting issues, according to Apple Support forum threads.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers Web site was also updated Tuesday, saying that codes were sent out Monday and if a fan hadn't received it, they should check their spam folders before calling iTunes Support.
Even with the official word from the band, so far Apple has stayed mum as to what exactly had happened that caused the issues. No representatives had posted in the thread explaining what had happened, which left a bad taste in some users mouths.
Additionally, once the codes were sent it was already past the time of the start of the presale, and those who had gotten their codes on time had already grabbed the good seats.
"I just got my Calgary codes and I'm more steamed than ever," a poster who went by the username "stevelaw" wrote. "The only available tickets are disasters. Level two, high up, way on the sides. I can understand that maybe 'floor, front row' isn't likely... but a presale does confer an expectation of advantageous tickets, and these they ain't."
A request for comment from Apple was outstanding as of press time.