Interesting Phish ticket info

[shackman]

Hey everyone,

I just read this on the rhombus and thought that I'd pass it along:

I just received this email from my friend Beth. She lives in NYC and is the original female Phish taper and has been taping them since the 80's. It does not get any more reliable then this.

This should shed some light on why nobody can get tickets.

YOU MUST FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO SAVE PHISH TICKETS FROM ALL BEING SCALPED!

As you all have tried to get Phish tickets for the 4 shows they will be performing at the start of 2003 and you all have been denied, I have found out why. I have talked with over 30 scalping companies and I have been in correspondance with the Phish family. I also have a few people I have talked to that work with ticketmaster.

This is what happened: For the lottery, thousands of scalping people and companies received information of the demand for this ticket. Since they have large number of employees and accounts they were able to secure the majority of tickets away from the fans. They are now posting them on ebay for a minimum of $500 per ticket bids.

Now when it comes to ticketmaster they have a lot of internal security issues when it comes to tickets. Several of their employees receive special cuts from scalpers for securing large lots of tickets. (This

is why the internet locked up and NO ONE got

tickets) So the scalping companies have the

majority of those tickets as well. Which means only a small minority of fans (around 5,000-8,000) actually got tickets. This type of thing has happened often in the past with big name concerts (Madonna, U2, Pearl Jam etc.) and it is because of this that Eddie Vedder attempted to form his own

version of ticketmaster to get tickets to

the fans and not the scalpers (but of course he failed).

What PHISH is doing to stop this:

For the past few weeks, the Phish organization has called all listed scalpers and have been watching ebay. If any of the addresses for the tickets to be sent (lottery and ticketmaster) match those of

scalpers they are cancelling tehir orders and will replace those tickets for sale again (date and time not known).

This is the reason tickets will not be mailed until Decemeber 1st 2002. They are also checking ebay and finding out which tickets they are trying to sell and cancelling those orders as well. Hopefully, this will increase the number of tickets available to phans.

What YOU can do to help yourself get tickets and help PHISH STOP scalpers:

1. DO NOT BUY TICKETS FROM SCALPERS! If you buy a ticket from a scalper before they receive it, most likely their ticket order will be cancelled and you will be out money and tickets! (You could probably report it to your credit card company, but it will take time to sort out that mess and loads of

paperwork).

2. Forward this email to everyone you know.

3. Email, write, or call Phish and tell them your concern and ask what you can do to help.

Http://www.phish.com for contact info.

If all of us phans get together and work together we may not all be able to go, BUT we will increase our chances of going. If we continue to pay scalpers, then it will soon get to the point where ALL of the tickets will be owned by the scalpers. Don't be lazy!

SAVE THE BAND YOU LOVE!

DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW!