Woodkirk Stone
Music fans eager for the beloved Harvest Music Festival to return to Fredericton will have to wait a little longer to get their hands on tickets.
Organizers are suspending sales after “errors” with Ticketpro, the online platform used by the festival, prevented people from purchasing early-release passes and tickets.
The decision to postpone came less than two hours after tickets went on sale Friday at 11 a.m.
Visitors to the ticketing platform receive a message from Ticketpro stating that the website is under maintenance and currently unavailable. The issue led to a wave of complaints on the festival’s Facebook page and on social media.
Calls to the customer service phone number provided go directly to a recorded message explaining that the company is “currently having technical issues” and is working to resolve the issue.
Festival music director Brent Staeben said the organizing committee was “extremely disappointed” and apologized to everyone involved.
“We are working with our supplier Ticketpro to make sure we understand what has happened and we can come back in a few days to put those tickets back on sale,†he said.
Despite the problems, around 200 ticket orders were successfully placed.
Staeben said that “something was wrong” with the Ticketpro platform which slowed the site down enormously. The company located the problem after investigating Friday.
He was also able to identify some people who were in the final stages of purchasing tickets and call them directly to complete their orders.
Staeben said testing will be carried out on Monday and that he expects to be able to announce the next on-sale date on Tuesday.
“We want to make it fair, we want to make sure this system works,” he said. “It should never have happened and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen next week.”
Late ticketing passed
Box office issues at the popular music festival resulted in a lawsuit in 2019, after another online platform forced organizers to delay sales by two weeks.
This prompted a switch to its current ticketing partner, Ticketpro.
The festival, known at the time as Harvest Jazz & Blues, sued Canadian Live Productions Inc., which operates etixnow.com, for alleged breach of contract and “significant losses.”
Court records show the company claimed the festival was the source of the problems.
In June, Harvest Jazz & Blues posted a statement on extixnow.com on its website.
“Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival Inc. sincerely apologizes to Canadian Live Productions Inc. for any communication questioning the competence of Canadian Live Productions Inc.,” the statement read.
“Extremely frustrating”
Jon Green was thrilled to attend Harvest this year after five concerts he had purchased tickets for due to the pandemic canceled.
But after an “extremely frustrating” and “disappointing” experience trying to get tickets, he is not sure if he will be able to attend a show.
The Fredericton viewer made sure their account information was up to date the day before. Then on Friday, Green went to the website around 9:30 a.m. – an hour and a half before sales opened – to be placed in a virtual waiting room.
When there were about three hundred people in the queue, constant error messages started appearing on the screen.
“It got to the point where it was literally the payment, the payment information, whatever was in there – and then he just told me my session was up,†he said.
In the years of buying concert tickets, he said he had never seen anything like it before.
Green plans to give ticket sales another chance.
“It’s a great event, it’s just a shame that the ticket provider is not up to the committee organizers because it’s a great show and they have put together an excellent lineup for the year”, a- he declared.
The annual Fredericton Music Festival was canceled last year due to the pandemic. The event will take place this year from September 14 to 19.