Two People Assigned the Same Seat

[Huss417]

Posted: 3/2/24 at 4:31pm

Last night while I was at Jelly's Last Jam I was sitting in my seat and this guy comes up to me and says "I think you are in my seat." I showed him my ticket (Printed from the box office) the seat number section and date, He shows me his phone and it's the same. Mind you it is now about 10 minutes till curtain.

I stopped an usher and explained the situation she looks at the tickets and said I need to bring you to the house manager. The HM starts with my ticket. ask my name and such. Then does the same with the other guy with his phone.

The HM then turns to us and tells us the seat belongs to me and unfortunately the seat he brought from a third party ticket site is counterfeit. He asked about sitting elsewhere and is told he would have to go purchase another ticket. He then asks how does he get his money back? She tells him to contact his credit card company. I sat back down in my seat right as the house lights went down. I did feel sorry for him.

This was a first for me.

 

 

[KarenValentine'sheadband]

Posted: 3/2/24 at 5:30pm

When you buy from scalpers that's the risk you take. Scalpers are scum, IMO. 

[yyys]

Posted: 3/2/24 at 5:35pm

How did he get in with a forfeited ticket? Don't they scan a barcode?

[Huss417]

Posted: 3/2/24 at 5:41pm

yyys said: "How did he get in with a forfeitedticket? Don't they scan a barcode?"

City Center does scan the barcodes but I have no clue about what happened with his.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Posted: 3/2/24 at 7:56pm

They didn't scan my fake ticket, so I was never seating, but I got turned away from a performance of War Paint with Patti LuPone in 2017 because StubHub sold me a fake ticket. They still had a physical office in Time Square and much better customer service at the time, so I got a full refund and just went another day (although LuPone was sick the day I did go). 

It's probably a bigger deal with a limited run show like Jelly's Last Jam, where going another day isn't an option.

[DramaTeach]

Posted: 3/2/24 at 8:12pm

So weird that this is a topic because this just happened to me in London. Got my tickets to The Motive and the Cue at the box office an hour before the show and when we got to the seats, people were already there. The house manager’s explanation was super vague (“sometimes when you print them out…), so we figured he’d move our seats as they were already seats and the show was starting in two minutes (they start on time in London). Instead, he moved the other people and put them on the side a few rows in front of us. They were not happy.

[Wick3]

Posted: 3/2/24 at 8:33pm

This happened at first preview of Flying Over Sunset in 2021 at Vivian Beaumont. Scanners didn’t work so they manually checked tickets. A guy sat in front row center orchestra saw another person was sitting in his seat. House manager came and found that the person sitting in the seat had a ticket that was for the next day (same seat.) he had to go back to the box office.

Im guessing before scanning tickets this was more common.

[Wick3]

Posted: 3/2/24 at 8:57pm

Huss417 said: "yyys said: "How did he get in with a forfeitedticket? Don't they scan a barcode?"

City Center does scan the barcodes but I have no clue about what happened with his."

I’m curious too since when I saw Jelly last week, the show wasn’t sold out and thus ticket resale was most likely nonexistent. If your performance wasn’t sold out, then not sure why someone would buy from a third party rather than directly from city center.

[broadfan327]

Posted: 3/2/24 at 10:10pm

I saw this at a Broadway show once, they just seated the person at another seat I think.  I once went to a Yankees playoff game on the wrong day, they scanned my ticket and it let me in somehow.  The person said I was in his seat, and he was right, I was able to move to another seat without incident.

[quizking101]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 8:37am

Wick3 said: "Huss417 said: "yyys said: "How did he get in with a forfeitedticket? Don't they scan a barcode?"

City Center does scan the barcodes but I have no clue about what happened with his."

I’m curious too since when I saw Jelly last week, the show wasn’t sold out and thus ticket resale was most likely nonexistent. If your performance wasn’t sold out, then not sure why someone would buy from a third party rather than directly from city center."

The uninformed theatergoer is who the scalper preys on because they don’t know better and so anytime they do a simple Google search for tickets, it’s entirely possible they may just click the first link that they see and buy from there.

That’s how Broadway.com stays in business and we, the informed theatregoers, know better than to buy from there since it’s really just a well-designed third party scalping site.

[Impeach2017]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 10:14am

Your fascinating story started out well, but kind of fizzled at the end with no pay-off.  

[BroadwayNYC2]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 12:15pm

What did you want? A fight?

[Kad]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 12:39pm

It’s extremely uncommon for two legitimate tickets to be identical. It’s almost always an audience member’s error or a counterfeit. I worked with ticketing for a bit 11 years ago, and even then it was more or less impossible to get the ticketing software to make that happen. Even reprinting a ticket caused the original ticket to become invalidated. 

[uncageg]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 1:33pm

Wick3 said: "Huss417 said: "yyys said: "How did he get in with a forfeitedticket? Don't they scan a barcode?"

City Center does scan the barcodes but I have no clue about what happened with his."

I’m curious too since when I saw Jelly last week, the show wasn’t sold out and thus ticket resale was most likely nonexistent. If your performance wasn’t sold out, then not sure why someone would buy from a third party rather than directly from city center."

 

A lot of people go online to buy tickets, see the show and click on the link. They don't realize that they are buying from a third party. It happens constantly. I work Box office for 5 years and saw it all the time. There were also cases where people bought the tickets, never checked them and then when they got to the theater they couldn't pull them up. They weren't in our system so the people had to buy tickets at the box office if they were available. We told them to contact their credit card companies and the seller they bought them from if they could. A lot of times the 3rd party sites will be at or near the top of their online search so they just click on that. 99% of the time someone came to the window with a problem and you asked "Where did you purchase your tickets", their answer was "Online". They had no clue what company they bought the tickets from.

 

[Impeach2017]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 3:11pm

BroadwayNYC2 said: "What did you want? A fight?"

as a matter of fact...

[BroadwayNYC2]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 6:15pm

Yikes! Don’t do that, it ain’t cute. 

[lilpunkin]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 6:26pm

Not quite the same thing but the Young Vic in London do a thing where they invite members of their Genesis Network (for aspiring and early career artists) to come to theatre to potentially be seat fillers, no guarantee of getting to see the show but the possibility of a really nice seat for free.

The problem is they don’t use seat fillers for unsold seats, but for seats where the person who bought or reserved the ticket didn’t show up. (Seat fillers are only seated literally seconds before curtain up and they are expected to literally run, the ushers look at any gaps and pop seat fillers in them.)

When I went to see the Inheritance (7 hours long in total) I made a deliberate choice for various reasons to skip the first act and arrive for the first interval, and they’d bloody given the seat I’d paid for to a seat filler! Fortunately the YV just has rows, not individual seats, so we all budged up and we both managed to squeeze in, but I don’t know how they can give away purchased seats when someone might just be late.

 

Seat fillers for award shows are people who sit in a seat temporarily while the person is in the bathroom but this is different. Once you’re given a seat filler seat then that’s your seat. 

[Huss417]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 7:11pm

Impeach2017 said: "Your fascinating story started out well, but kind of fizzled at the end with no pay-off."

It's comments like yours that in the long run stop people from sharing their experiences.

[Cape Twirl of Doom]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 7:34pm

Was this in the front balcony? I was also there last night and the same thing happened in row C or D. It looked like two people had the same ticket and an usher walked down the row to figure out the mess, and the guy who had to move was told to sit in an empty seat near the end of the row. Not sure if this is the same incident as yours.

[BroadwayNYC2]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 7:44pm

“When I went to see the Inheritance (7 hours long in total) I made a deliberate choice for various reasons to skip the first act and arrive for the first interval, and they’d bloody given the seat I’d paid for to a seat filler!”

 

You bought a ticket for a show that started a certain time, and didn’t show up for said time. What did you think they were going to do? It isn’t a choose your own adventure novel. 

[Huss417]

Posted: 3/3/24 at 8:11pm

Cape Twirl of Doom said: "Was this in the front balcony? I was also there last night and the same thing happened in row C or D. It looked like two people had the same ticket and an usher walked down the row to figure out the mess, and the guy who had to move was told to sit in an empty seat near the end of the row. Not sure if this is the same incident as yours."

I was Row AA in the Orchestra Pit.

[Boq101]

Posted: 3/4/24 at 12:20am

When I used to work in an off-broadway theater complex in the city we'd get someone there on the wrong day once or twice a week. People really didn't understand they couldn't just come on another day and use their ticket. 

Once in a while people would leave a show in one space five minutes in and ask if they could use their ticket to instead watch one of the other shows, not realizing that's now how things work. 

[lilpunkin]

Posted: 3/4/24 at 6:32am

BroadwayNYC2 said: "“When I went to see the Inheritance (7 hours long in total) I made a deliberate choice for various reasons to skip the first act and arrive for the first interval, and they’d bloody given the seat I’d paid for to a seat filler!”



You bought a ticket for a show that started a certain time, and didn’t show up for said time. What did you think they were going to do? It isn’t a choose your own adventure novel."


 

Don’t be ridiculous. If you purchase a seat for a show that entitles you to occupy the seat for the duration of the show. You are not obligated to sit in the seat throughout - plenty of people leave at the interval. If someone desperately needed the loo and quietly crept out during the first half, would you argue that by leaving they had forfeited their ticket completely and should be refused re-entry for the second half?

Obviously theatres can implement latecomers policies to prevent disruption to other audience members, but I’ve never seen or heard of a theatre that refuses to permit latecomers to take their seat during the interval (or other suitable break).

A theatre really shouldn’t be selling/gifting the same seat to two different audience members, so that two different people are issued tickets for the same seat. That’s obviously going to cause problems. (Unless it’s a one-act play with a strict no latecomers policy.)

I am profoundly disabled so I often have no choice but to purchase two tickets to the same show on concurrent nights and watch the first half on Monday and the second half on Tuesday. Perhaps things are different in America but here in London is not especially unusual for people to skip the first half and take their seat during the interval for the second half.

[BroadwayNYC2]

Posted: 3/4/24 at 8:03am

“ Don’t be ridiculous. If you purchase a seat for a show that entitles you to occupy the seat for the duration of the show.”

clearly it doesn’t, hence why they have a waiting list. What do you think that’s for? 

[lilpunkin]

Posted: 3/4/24 at 8:30am

BroadwayNYC2 said: "“ Don’t be ridiculous. If you purchase a seat for a show that entitles you to occupy the seat for the duration of the show.”

clearly it doesn’t, hence why they have a waiting list. What do you think that’s for?"

The Young Vic is the only theatre in Britain that operates a “seat filler” policy where they issue a second ticket to SOLD seats if the person happens to be late.

Every other theatre that operates a waiting list does so purely for returns. There’s a huge difference between a wait list for returns, and using seat fillers.

It is extremely standard and normal in London theatre for people to be seated during specific latecomer points, or to be asked to wait till the interval. Maybe it’s different in NY but it’s very very normal here.

 

It’s obviously problematic and stupid to issue two separate tickets to two different people for the same seat at the same production.

 

If your policy is “We operate a strict no latecomers policy, if don’t take your seat by 7.29pm your ticket will be re-sold” then that’s one thing (that obviously would need to be explicitly stated), but the whole point is the Young Vic do not have a no latecomers policy, in fact quite the opposite. That’s the whole point. They happily let latecomers in while also double-selling the same ticket, which inevitably leads to conflict mid-show between the person who bought the ticket who was brought in to the theatre by an usher at the designated latecomers spot, and the person who has been given the latecomers seat.