Good news, I'm rich!
Even better news, you are too! At least if you've gone to a concert or ticketed event in the last decade or so!
We just won nearly $400 million! Well, sort of.
Ticketmaster will give 50 million customers discount codes and vouchers this month ("starting on or around June 18"), thanks to a 13-year-old class-action lawsuit -- filed ages ago by Curt Schlesinger and finally settled in May -- that claimed some of Ticketmaster's fees are "deceptive" and "misleading."
We're eligible "Class" members if: We bought tickets and paid order-processing fees on Ticketmaster.com from Oct. 21, 1999, through Feb. 27, 2013, as residents of the United States (and have not officially opted out of the class).
Class members should expect to receive a discount code in their Ticketmaster.com account for each transaction during that period (up to a maximum of 17 discount codes). And each code can be applied for a $2.25 credit toward a future online ticket purchase.
Class members who used UPS also will receive a UPS discount code for each eligible transaction (up to maximum of 17). Each is worth $5 toward future UPS charges.
And then there are the ticket codes. Each class member will get a ticket code good for two free concert tickets (up to a maximum of 17) for each transaction during that period. Those will be eligible for general-admission seating during designated concert events.
All these codes are good for four years.
Are you ready to cash in those codes? Me too! Hamilton, here I come! Let's get started. Here's what we must do:
Go to Ticketmaster.com.
Sign in to our accounts.
Realize we can't remember our passwords.
Have temporary passwords sent to email (and hope we still use or at least can remember the addresses).
Sign in to our accounts with temporary passwords and choose new passwords.
Click our "Account" link.
Look down the left column and find "Vouchers."
Click "Active Vouchers."
Be prepared to enter that new password that we just selected and already might have forgotten.
Watch the screen say, "Loading vouchers," and watch the wait circle.
Watch it spin. And spin. And spin.
Yep, it's still spinning.
Get dizzy.
Go to the bathroom.
Come back.
Yeesh, it's still loading?
Google "formal name of spinning wait circle."
It's called a "throbber." We learned something today!
Cheer when throbber finally stops.
Read error message: "We are experiencing difficulties. Please check back again at a later time."
Repeat steps 6 through 20. Surely everyone is checking for their freebies and the server is overloaded.
Ask our friends if they've had better luck with their vouchers so far. (Yes, says at least one friend on Facebook: "I got seven sets of free tickets and nine discount codes." Hmph! Maybe she'll take pity on us and take us to a concert!)
Repeat steps 6 through 20 again and again until we finally get our vouchers.
Finally get the vouchers to come up. Wow. All those years of performance reviews have added up: I received the maximum 17 discount codes and 17 ticket codes (though I could not find a list of eligible performances on ticketmaster.com/microsite/settlement by press time).
Take medicine for "throbbing" headache. We wouldn't be ready for a free concert after this exhausting production anyhow.
Make a concert-ed effort to email:
jchristman@arkansasonline.com
Spin Cycle is a smirk at pop culture. You can hear Jennifer on Little Rock's KURB-FM, B98.5 (B98.com), from 5:30-9 a.m. Monday through Friday.
Style on 06/26/2016