
UPDATE: Nov. 17, 4:35 p.m.
Ticketmaster says it is canceling Friday's planned general public sale for Taylor Swift's upcoming stadium tour because it doesn't have enough tickets, The Associated Press reports.
The decision comes two days after a presale event caused the site to crash, leaving many fans without tickets. The ticketing company said in a statement Thursday that 2 million tickets were sold during presales on Tuesday, the most tickets ever sold on the platform in a single day.
Original story follows:
PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Ticketmaster had a lot of disappointed Taylor Swift fans seeing red after they had trouble online Tuesday, trying to nab presale tickets for the performer's three shows at Lincoln Financial Field in May. But Swifties still have two more chances to snag some stubs, with extended presale tickets Wednesday and general admission sales Thursday.
Thousands of Philadelphia-area fans spent hours in an online waiting room Tuesday after the Ticketmaster site crashed under the surge of Swifties.
The company even shifted the start times of presales for the West Coast and moved some to Wednesday all together, but by the time disappointed fans got through, tickets were mostly sold out.
“I'm almost traumatized to the point where I don't want to go back in and see if I can get better tickets!” said Grace Ann Alfiero of Bucks County. She ended up getting her tickets through resale site Stub Hub.
“It's after I tried probably 120 times to get tickets through Ticketmaster. It came to a point where I was afraid that I wasn't going to get any tickets and so I ended up paying $600 per ticket.”
Adding insult to injury, she said: “We have terrible seats.”
Echoing the sentiment of many comments on Twitter, she said, “It really plays to the affluent audience, and it's really exploitive.”
As the Swift bop goes, "It must be exhausting, always rooting for the anti-hero."
Lindsay Streussnig of Paoli said she spent all day online for tickets but ended up with nothing to show for it.
"I'm not even gonna lie. I cried a few times," she said.
She blames Ticketmaster.
“You had to sign up to be a verified fan. I guess it's Ticketmaster's way of controlling scalpers,” she said.
Ticketmaster acknowledged Tuesday via Twitter that they were having problems and encouraged fans to use their mobile site. That’s how Karen Richter scored five tickets after waiting online for two and a half hours.
“I finally was able to refresh my browser. And then I got stuck again for over an hour with it saying that I was being redirected.”
Richter thought it was a lost cause — but then she received a notification to make her purchase.
“It was completely bizarre, and I was sure that I was stuck and not gonna get anywhere — and then all of a sudden, it bumped me into the ticket room," she said.
“I was actually driving and I had to pull over and complete the ticket purchase on my phone.”
And now, she has Mother’s Day plans with Taylor Swift: “I was very happy and my kids are even happier.”
Richter spent about $600 for five tickets,
“There were only 200-level seats available, but at that point, I was just happy to have anything. And we'll bring binoculars!”
The company called the demand historically unprecedented and said, despite the hiccups, hundreds of thousands of tickets have been sold.
Fans had a second chance at presale tickets Wednesday, and general admission sales will start Thursday.
Swift's "Eras" tour is her first in five years. It kicks off in four months in Arizona.