Tom Petty cancels 460 scalped presale tickets

[estranged4life]

http://www.tompetty.com/index8.html

5/4/06 – St. Paul scalpers foiled, new fan club presale to be announced

This just in from Tony Dimitriades, manager of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

As promised, we have continued to investigate how our fan club tickets were acquired and distributed during last week’s presales, particularly in Minnesota. And with the help of the folks at Ticketmaster and Signatures, who at our request have scoured scalper and secondary ticket outlets, we have identified approximately 460 tickets for the June 26 and 27 concerts at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn. that were allocated for Highway Companions Club members, but which were either resold or acquired by scalpers in clear violation of the fan club conditions of membership.

THOSE TICKETS HAVE NOW BEEN CANCELED ALONG WITH THE ASSOCIATED FAN CLUB MEMBERSHIPS. We will make these tickets available to fan club members who comply with the conditions of fan club membership and are willing to pick up their tickets at a special fan club Will Call window on the night of the show. In order to accomplish this, a new Internet on-sale of these tickets open only to fan club members will be announced shortly.


**Please DO NOT CALL Ticketmaster, the Fan Club, or the building box office regarding your tickets. Cancellation emails have been sent via email to the address associated with the Ticketmaster transaction. If you did not post your tickets for resale, your order should not have been canceled. If you did not receive a cancellation email, but you are concerned about your tickets, or if you purchased tickets from any source other than Ticketmaster, you may check our posting of the canceled seat locations. If you purchased tickets from an unauthorized source, and those tickets were canceled, your only recourse is through the unauthorized seller.

We will continue to be vigilant and to make every effort to make the fan club an enjoyable and rewarding experience for all members. In fact, last Tuesday, we were able to identify and remedy within minutes a problem at the Denver presale.

An apology from the Pepsi Center's box office manager will be found elsewhere on TomPetty.com, and those fans who purchased bad tickets inadvertently released from an inventory other than that set aside for the fan club will be contacted and offered better tickets.

By now, you are probably also aware that we have responded to your ticketing concerns and desires by changing the way fan club tickets are delivered. Beginning with this week’s presales (ie. Those from May 2 onwards), Highway Companions Club members will be required to pick up their tickets from a special fan club will call window. Tickets will only be released to members who can show an ID and the credit card that matches their ticket purchase information.

To be clear, only the St. Paul tickets that have been canceled will be re-sold to fan club members, and it is only those tickets that will be required to be picked up at will call with proper identification. All other St. Paul fan club tickets purchased in last week’s presale will remain valid.

We don’t claim to have completely eliminated all reselling activity on these or any other shows, but this is definitely a step in the right direction and a major strike on behalf of the good guys.

Our thanks to Xcel Energy Center, Ticketmaster, Signatures and the promoters Jam Productions, all of whom responded to the call with total commitment and all their resources.

[Jyqm]

Well done, gents. Good form.