Ticketmaster Spain experience; lousy website and terrible service
 

I hope that my experience is unique, but I am posting to warn others.

I had to use Ticketmaster Spain to buy tickets for Sagrada Familia. I had to go through the data entry many times as it is quite "quirky". It demands a middle name. I do not have one, so I just entered something, which later was an explanation for denying payment. It was not the cause, as the bank uncovered after two painful days.

When finally I was able to finish the data entry (NO options for selecting the delivery mechanism for the tickets), I got an Email confirmation stating that I will get the tickets in a separate Email for printing. I never got the promised Email w. the tickets.

When you try to contact Ticketmaster Spain for help, you are FORCED to walk through their FAQ. In then end, if what's there didn't help you, they give you an option to fill out a form, which I did. When you are done, nothing shows or tells you that the form went out, it just sits there. Assuming that something went wrong, I repeated the lengthy process. Little later I got an Email with a reference number asking me to validate myself, which I did.

Today, I got an answer which stated that I requested delivery to a local office in Barcelona where I should go to pickup the tickets. I replied, stating that I never requested that as their website doesn't provide the option. An automated reply came back suggesting to go back to the FAQ to find whatever help I need.

I just hope that I will never again be forced to use this terrible company for my trip.

I wrote to Sagrada Familia and I was happy that they will take the order number and the credit card and print the tickets there, so I do not have to waste more time going to other places to get the tickets.

Such is life. We've never experienced a problem with purchasing tickets from Ticketmaster. You can always complain to the owner, Paul Allen (of Microsoft fame).

I am sorry, but I do not understand the problem. I got reservations on the same website without a glitch. Was not asked for a middle name and was able tto print the confirmation with no issues. Ni don't knowif you trouble was a computer issue or what, but I doubt that complaining to Paul Allen would help. He is a near neighbor and notoriously unresponsive.

so in the end you will have to stand in line to get the tickets after all?

First you have some problems with RENFE now with ticketmaster. It is not going well for you is it?

And I wonder why?

We purchased Sagrada Familia tickets online through ticketmaster last week. The website described the two options to get the tickets: print or pick up at a la Caixa bank. We didn't have a printer, so we selected la Caixa. We had no problems making the purchase online, but we had trouble printing the tickets at the bank. We followed the English on screen instructions but kept getting an error message in Catalan (we can get by in Spanish, but don't know much Catalan). We thought the machine might be broken, so we went to a different branch but had the same result. We went back to try one more time, and then saw a torn piece of paper taped above the machine with different instructions to print the tickets. Duh to us - we weren't thinking to look on the wall for different instructions. The instructions on the paper worked perfectly. If anyone reading this is planning a visit to Gaudi attractions in Barcelona, we put some tips for buying tickets on our travel blog, http://latitudeb.com/gaudi-architecture-in-barcelona/. For example, while Sagrada Familia requires a paper ticket, you can show a pdf receipt on your cell phone at Casa Batllo.

Very useful information!

I always appreciate the time people take to try to help instead of making useless remarks. Thanks, Lori. If anyone thinks that buying RENFE tickets from RENFE is a user friendly, simple process, be my guest. I went back to http://visit.sagradafamilia.cat/?lang=en where I purchased the tickets and I had the problems that I reported. I followed through to the Ticketmaster site that comes up and validated that it DOES request a middle name. If you do not enter it the message that comes back is "You must enter a first surname" and it doesn't let you to the next step. The good news is that Sagrada Familia sent me an Email in which they said that if I have only a confirmation number, no printed tickets, I will not have to stand in line. The rest doesn't matter at this time. I do not want to create any controversy but for those who make the biting remarks: try first, comment next. Sometimes websites have different flavors and act differently depending on your entry point, offering a different experience. And yes, it happens that occasionally as end users we make mistakes or don't see something that one needs to pay attention to and we do create problems for ourselves.