User Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
by Disappointed buyer 01/24/2011
I bought 2 tickets for In the Heights for my daughter for Christmas. Naively I thought I was purchasing them from the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. The tickets were about $200 each and (again naively) I accepted Absolute Tickets statement that they promised the best seats at the best price. The tickets I purchased were in the balcony section but I thought they would be fine for two 17 year old girls. The "tickets" were fed exed (again at another large service charge) and were not tickets at all but were bar codes. A third naive thing is I trusted my 17 year old daughter to keep track of the tickets. Several times I asked her if she knew where they were and she assured me she did.

The day of the performance she went to find the tickets and she was unable to do so. She had put them in a safe place but it was so safe that even she couldn't remember where they were. (All of this is our repsonsibility I know. Mind you we have spent about $450 on these two tickets thus far).

I sen e-mails to Absolute Tickets the day of the performance (a Saturday matinee) and I also called them. The recording said theiy opened at 10 on Saturday LA time. We live in Philadelphia so there is a 3 hour time difference. The performance was at 2 PM so we decided to drive into Philadelphia and I was confident I would be able to reach the broker before the performance and something could be worked out. I called at least 5 or 6 times and at 1:35 ended up buying two more tickets.

The tickets I purchased from Absolute Tickets were $200 each in the "nose bleed" section. When I got to the Academy of Music and asked about other tickets I was told there were two parquet tickets for $97 each--and no service charge. My daughter said the seats were great.

I learned an expensive lesson. For one thing the tickets were over twice what they were at the venue and the tickets I purchased were not nearly as good as the replacement tickets.

Today I heard from Absolute Tickets and was told they are closed on the weekend. Why don't they change their recording then? They said they were open so I kept calling them.

The bottom line from Absolute Tickets was too bad, you're out of luck. Never again will I purchase anything from this broker and I encourage you to check them out thoroughly as well. They are not a reputable source and do not stand by their (expensive) product.
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