World of Weird Al Yankovic

Anybody care to speculate on PAID's chances of holding on to the Yankovic account? http://www.marketwatch.com/story/paid-i ... _news_stmp

Depends if they can learn from their mistakes. Even us non-VIP ticket holders had delays in tickets - we were told tickets would be sent out 2 weeks prior and I got mine 2 days before - and that's not going to keep a company in the black long, regardless of their press releases. All it takes is one high profile screw up and their game is over.

PAID made a lot of mistakes, but when they made mistakes they almost always (or maybe even just flat-out ALWAYS) apologized for them and corrected them in enough time so no harm was done. They were easy to reach and their customer service was above-average if not exceptional. That's still infinitely preferable to Artist Aripoff.

Having done a lot of C/S type work in my life, I have an unusually high expectation of customer service, so not sure I'd say exceptional, although above average would be ok. Response times to my emails was 1-2 days, which isn't that great, but at least it was a response. As a comparison, I emailed iTunes on just a random comment a few days back and had a human response back a day later (and wasn't even expecting one, but they were following up). I'd rate that exceptional.

All that said, if I would have not gotten my tickets (and they weren't delivered by the promised date NOR was any proactive notification sent out saying this - I had to email to ask where my tickets were), that would have been the failure point. You can talk nice all you want, when you fail to deliver, it's blown. Like for Albinodwarf - s/he was almost without a seat, as an example.

(it's she!) In my case, the problem was not PAID's fault, it was the venue. It was frustrating not to be able to reach anyone at PAID to straighten out the mess when I needed help, but other than that, I have no real issue with them.

PAID did a lot better as far as getting me good seats as opposed to any pre-sale offer I'd tried before them. Got first row with a VIP ticket, and second row with a premium ticket order this tour. I hope Al keeps them.

~Allison

The one time I called about my tickets, the customer service was fine. She knew when tickets were sent out and didn't have to search a computer for 5 minutes to get the info. Not too bad. I got 7th row which was pretty good for a non-VIP ticket.

Some of PAID's problems were beyond their control, and still others were inherited from AA's incompetency. I felt PAID took appropriate action to fix them as best they could whether the problems were on their side or not. Emails were answered quickly and honestly. The people I talked to on the phone were friendly and helpful.

I only got one "bad" seat at the Keswick Theater through them, and a majority of the time, they came through with the best seats in the venue, or top of the line seats. From my experience, with theaters you were just as likely to get equivalent seats from PAID as you were if you went through Ticketmaster or the venue. And for casinos PAID was unequivocally the best choice.

Overall, I'm pleased, and I hope Al sticks with them for next tour.

Dave

Well, I can't complain about the quality of the seats - if that was the sole aspect of what we were talking about I'd be raving. 5 rows back, dead middle of the stage were the best seats I've ever sat at in a concert for enjoyment purposes. Front row is overrated, imo. Also, I felt the overall price was fine. I just saw Bill Cosby over the weekend and it was $60 for a balcony seat in a slightly bigger theatre compared to my close seats at Al's for the same price (floor seats for Cosby were $75-$95).

Apologies if this isn't the right place to post this, or if this has been posted before - I haven't been abreast of touring and tickets since I moved to Australia a couple years ago.

The last time I bought pre-order tickets, Artist Arena was handling it. It used to be that through WeirdAl.com, you could buy pre-order tickets only if you had the "password" - which I'm pretty sure was just "tickets" ... very top secret! I'm glad that PAID is handling things now, but I'm not clear about the procedure. I've got a PAID account to log in with, is that all you need to pre-order tickets? I'm going to be attempting to get some tickets for the Perth show and the pre-sale starts tomorrow at 10am our time - I just would like to know in advance if I need any other information so I don't get jammed up while I'm trying to order - I want the best seats I can manage.

Thanks, if anybody can help me out!

Christina