I hate itptickets.com

I've bought tickets on itptickets.com a couple of times already, and never ran into any problems with the website.

A couple of days ago, I wanted to buy tickets to the Russell Peters show in Dubai. Now for those of you who don't know Russell Peters, he's a Canadian stand-up comedian of Indian origin, and he's really funny. You can watch part of his act here.

Anyway, so Russell had a first show planned on March 11, which sold out within hours of tickets going on sale. I had completely forgotten about the show that day and did not buy any tickets. So when I was told that the show had sold out, I was disappointed.

Then, my brother tells me that a second show was added, and that tickets would go on sale at midnight that night. That was a couple of days ago.

So at 11:45, I was ready. I had my laptop in front of me, my credit card ready, I had logged in to itptickets.com, and I was refreshing the page every 5 minutes to make sure I'd be one of the first to buy my tickets.

At 12 o'clock, things went awry. The website started messing up, and it was extremely slow. I tried several times to purchase my tickets but couldn't get through to the payment page. I was trying to get front section tickets, but after 20 minutes of pointless tries, I get a message saying that front section tickets were sold out.

Okay, fine. Let's try back section tickets then. Again, I try, and try, and try some more. Finally, another 20 minutes later, as I was about to fall asleep on my laptop, I succeed in getting to the payment page. Hurrah!

I enter my credit card info, and proceed with the payment. I get a black message box informing me to wait while my credit card is verified, and that if I do not get a confirmation message, I should contact a person from ITP, and that I should NOT attempt to send the order through again.

I knew deep down that my purchase did not go through. But I decided to go to bed that night, with a glimmer of hope that the next day, I would be pleasantly surprised.

So the very next morning, I called ITP ticket's infoline. I call, and call, and call again, and all I get is a voice saying "all our representatives are currently busy, please leave a message and we will call you back"... only to be followed by another message saying "sorry, our mailbox is currently full".

Hmm...Finally, by around 2PM, I manage to speak to a human being. He very grudgingly takes my name and phone number, and says that he will investigate if my payment went through and will call me back.

No news.

I decide to call again today, and after several tries, I manage to speak to someone (I think it was the same grumpy person I spoke to the first time), and this time he confirms that my payment did not go through, and that I did not get any tickets.

He said that 8000 people were trying to access the site that day, and there were 1800 tickets on sale only.

He also said that they were trying to book a 3rd show, but that they were awaiting confirmation from Russell Peters, to see if he could do it. And that they would contact me if this was the case.

Anyway, I know that it's not all ITP's fault, and that the number of people trying to access their website at the same time would have wreaked havoc on any website, not just theirs...but still...I really really wanted some Russell Peters tickets :(