That’s the verdict from ticked-off fans, reports The NYPost, who are balking at buying seats for the 28-year-old pop star’s tour to promote her new “Reputation” album, citing stratospheric markups and greedy sales gimmicks.
“I paid $150 for my ticket with amazing seats for the 1989 tour. Now for the same seats I have to pay about $500,” Twitter user “swiftieloves” recently griped.
That’s despite seats being available to the general public since Swift’s birthday on Dec. 13. By comparison, all the dates on Swift’s “1989” tour in 2015 “sold out within minutes,” according to concertsandsports.com.
On top of high prices, some prospective buyers are getting irked by Ticketmaster’s “Verified Fan” program, which required participants to register weeks before tickets went on presale, proving they were and bona fide fans and not bots looking to buy tickets for scalpers.
Verified Fan — which got rebranded to “Taylor Swift Tix” for the tour — has added a controversial feature called “boosts” that promises fans a chance to “improve [their] position in line to purchase tickets.”
Some boosts were innocuous, such as joining Swift’s official mailing list. But others cost money, such as pre-ordering the “Reputation” album, shelling out $50 for a T-shirt or purchasing the $60 snake ring that Swift wore in her “Look What You Made Me Do” music video.
Music blogger Bob Lefsetz called Taylor Swift Tix “a tone-deaf scam” that amounts to “upselling with a theoretical benefit” rather than a guarantee of better seats.
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