Elton John ticket snafu cleared

Elton John fans who tried to get the “middle-priced” ($79) tickets online Dec. 3 for the British pop legend’s Feb. 17 show at the Matthew Knight Arena had about as much chance as a “Candle in the Wind.”

The UO thinks about 4,000 online transactions affecting hundreds, if not thousands, of music fans resulted in error messages during attempts to buy those tickets online. But the UO doesn’t believe anyone was actually charged for the $79 tickets, and all holds placed on debit card and credit card accounts from anywhere from 24 to 72 hours have been released, Mike Duncan, UO’s senior associate athletic director for facilities, operations and events, said Thursday.

“The people that had problems, the pending things on their accounts should be gone,” Duncan said. “As we’ve talked to people, most of those things have cleared up.”

The UO has heard no complaints since Monday, Duncan said.

Although it’s a relief for the affected fans that they aren’t having to pay for tickets they didn’t get, it’s also frustrating because the show sold out in less than an hour.

Miscoded software on the www.matthewknightarena.com website resulted in the problem, UO officials said last week. Tickets went on sale at noon Dec. 3 for the initial concert in the new arena. The problem was corrected within 40 minutes, Duncan said. Tickets were priced at $29, $79 and $129. But only those trying to get the $79 tickets online were unable to, he said.

“It’s nice to have that kind of demand, but tickets go very quickly,” Duncan said. “We hope we’ll be able to bring another big show like that in the future and that we won’t have any problems.”

The ticketing fiasco left several Elton John fans feeling burned.

“Who actually got tickets?” asked a still-frustrated Linda Feit of Eugene. “And how did they get them? That’s what I want to know.”

Karen Rechel of Eugene said she tried to get the $79 tickets online for herself and her husband, Michael, right at noon last Friday and kept getting the error messages. So she tried the $129 tickets, and the same thing happened. Her husband then went to a nearby Safeway store to purchase tickets through TicketsWest, but gave up on the long line. The couple tried again online about 12:45 p.m., Karen Rechel said, but the concert was sold out by then.

“It was just ridiculous,” Rechel said. “It was very frustrating.”

Babs Manion, vice president of operations for SELCO Community Credit Union in Eugene, said about 200 SELCO customers who tried to buy tickets for the show online had pre-authorized holds placed on their debit and credit cards. Employees at the bank’s call center in Springfield had to deal with each account individually to release the holds, she said.

“It took awhile,” Manion said. Asked if SELCO would charge the UO for the time, Manion said: “I’ll let somebody else deal with that. That’s a legal matter.”