Taylor Swift Devastation
Taylor Swift Devastation
Thursday, July 6, 2023
Ever since Taylor Swift announced that she was coming to Singapore, we have been getting ready for this moment. The moment that tickets go on sale.
There were some tickets available for pre-sale to UOB bank card members. Unfortunately, we didn’t have UOB cards. That didn’t stop us as we applied for them but didn’t get them on time.
Plan B was to preregister for tickets which were given out in a lottery system. We registered all our email addresses and name but none of them were chose to get a code to get tickets. So we couldn’t even try to get tickets when they were released. Strike two.
Plan C was our last option for getting tickets. It was an app called Klook. It was a partner of the Taylor Swift Eras tour so it was selling tickets along with hotel stays. We registered for the app and I even purchased some bubble tea using the app so that it would have all my credit card information and I could see that it worked.
The tickets were being released on July 7th in Singapore at 12 pm which was 9 pm Thursday for us in Canada. Kelly, Alex and I happened to be in BC Children’s Hospital for his SEEG admission and Ava was staying with the Sauvés. We would both try to use our devices to get tickets. Around 8:45 I got a flurry of text messages from Ava. I was trying to get organized and trying to answer her. At 8:53 I had to call Ava and tell her that I couldn’t deal with constant texts. She just needed to figure it out because I was also trying to get tickets and answering her texts stopped me from being able to try to get tickets.
Kelly and I had our phones and iPads logged in and trying to get a queue number. At 9 pm we started trying to get a queue number. My phone got number 842 and was quickly in line. Alex’s iPad was in the high four thousands and the other devices were in the tens and hundreds of thousands.
When my queue number came up I quickly selected the best (and most expensive) seats available. I thought I was selecting 2 seats but I was selecting 2 pairs of seats. It asked for a hotel and i chose one quickly from the list even though we didn’t need a hotel. The prices were insane! $1500 per ticket. But anything for Taylor Swift. I was asked to do a sliding puzzle to prove I was not a robot and I paid with my visa and got a confirmation number and typed it in. Then all I got was a white screen. Nothing else. I thought that maybe there was a large volume of tickets being purchased and it would take a minute. But nothing. In the meantime, Alex’s iPad had gotten in and so I selected some other seats on that device that were a cheaper price and went through the process and also got to a white screen. There were no buttons or options. Just a white screen. I was given some hope that it was going to work because every once in a while I would get the sliding puzzle to prove I wasn’t a robot.
After more than an hour I got a screen giving me a confirmation number and a message saying that it had timed out and that I didn’t have the tickets. There wasn’t anything I could have done. I contacted Klook customer support and for weeks afterwards they couldn’t give me answers. They just apologized which wasn’t helpful.
Meanwhile, at the Sauvés Ava had her own devastation. her queue number was in the four thousands as well and she went through and selected seats and then saw how much they were and was shocked. She wasn’t sure if she should go through with that kind of cost. So she tried to go and change the choice of hotel to get a cheaper option. She wanted to contact us but I had said she needed to figure it out. Sara eventually texted Kelly but we didn’t see it because we were watching different devices. It wasn’t until later we saw the messages. In retrospect, we should have had another way to communicate such as the computer. By the time Ava decided to just go through with the expensive purchase the timer had timed out and she lost out. She was distraught and cried for an hour until we could get ahold of her.
So plans A, B, and C didn’t work. Looks like we will have to look for plan D, E or F.