Band members of Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Confusion over ticket sales for the Red Hot Chili Peppers concerts taking place in Februaury 2013 could leave many fans disappointed, after news of the availability of early bird tickets went viral,resulting in huge numbers of sales and rumours that Golden Cirle tickets for each concert were quickly selling out.
Official advertising and press releases from Big Concerts, who are organising the shows, had indicated that tickets would only be available on Wednesday for the Johannesburg concert and Thursday for the Cape Town concert. But tickets have been available through a link on the RHCP official site since Monday morning.
When the M&G attempted to purchase tickets through the link, we were number 4 334 in the queue. A later attempt put us at number 5 232.
When we eventually reached the front of the queue, we were able to purchase four standing-area tickets, but no more. Golden circle tickets, while showing up as an option, were not available to be bought. Many fans expressed disappointment at having to settle for standing or seated area tickets instead.
Big Concerts chief operating officer, John Langford, released a statement to reassure fans who are worried that they might miss out.
"Limited number of tickets have been made available via the band's website redhotchilipeppers.com. These can be accessed on a first-come, first-served basis, and only while stocks last.
"This pre-sale is not intended to impact on the public sale, which opens officially on Wednesday August 29 for the Johannesburg tour date, and Thursday August 30 for the Cape Town performance. The full spectrum of tickets [including golden circle, general standing and seated tickets] will be available through all Computicket channels when public sales open later this week."
But this information will do little to help disgruntled fans, who have now bought standing tickets, thinking that golden circle tickets were sold out entirely.
Big Concerts have not releaased information about how many tickets have been made available in this pre-sale period, which closes on Tuesday at 5pm.
They will also not be releasing figure on how many tickets have been sold already.
So far, no tickets have appeared on any sites such as Gumtree, although comments on the official RHCP page suggested that fans were already looking for alternative ways to purchase tickets.
Some left posts on the Facebook wall saying they had had issues with the Computicket site itself, with payments going through without tickets being issued.
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