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Tips for boosting your chances of getting concert tickets

theprospekt

By theprospekt
in Coldplay Live

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theprospekt

theprospekt

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Background: This is based on my experiences trying to get tickets for Royal Albert Hall July 1st and 2nd. I almost got two tickets for July 1st but my credit card got rejected due to some error. For July 2nd I got four tickets.

 

  • Preparation
    • The website. Get familiar with the site selling the tickets. Go (almost) all the way through the booking process for other events on the site. Is it possible to create an account and prefill adress and credit card info (as it was on Gigs and Tours)? This can up your chances of getting through the payment process before timeout. Is there an option to book the "best available" tickets?
    • Computers. The more computers the better. Avoid tablets and phones as they're slower for typing.
    • People. The more people the better. Ideally you want one person per computer, but one person can utilize for example six computers, like I did when trying to get tickets for July 1st in RAH. For July 2nd we were three people to six computers. How I made this possible is described below.
    • Internet connection DO NOT put too many units on one connection. We had three computers on WiFi and the other three each had their own phone hooked up as modem. Use a cable instead of for example Bluetooth for higher speed.

 

 

The special trick

I think the #1 reason we managed to get four tickets was this: Selenium IDE which is an add-on for Firefox for web browser automation. If you have no clue what I'm talking about this might be too big a mouthful for you. But if you know what, say, a "macro" is this could be very useful for you.

 

The basic idea is that you hit record and click around and it'll save the steps you took. You'll then be able to play back the steps. I used the following steps for my Gigs and Tours macro or "test case". I then inserted that same test case 1500 times (could be any number, just plenty) in the same test suite for repetition.

 

  1. assertNotTitle	Booking Form


    • This will fail the test if we're on the booking page which has that title. It'll then jump to next test and that too will fail - so we stop refreshing the page.

[*]

refreshAndWait

  • This step won't be reached if we're on the booking page.

[*]

select	css=table.price-list select:first-of-type	label=2

  • This will select two tickets in the first quantity box it can find - i.e. where it doesn't say Not Available or Sold Out. On Gigs and Tours ticket types are listed with the most expensive first so the macro will prefer a higher price.

[*]

clickAndWait	id=buyTickets

  • Click the Buy Tickets button.

[*]

clickAndWait	link=Buy tickets

  • Click another Buy Tickets button which is necessary on Gigs and Tours to actually lock the tickets.

 

So basically this spams refresh as quickly as it can and checks if there are tickets available. If there are it will click through to booking. And when it has clicked through to booking it will stop refreshing and just fail on the first step - which is very important.

 

Some of these steps were auto recorded by Selenium IDE, some weren't. For example the CSS selector in the "select" step was custom written to find the "best available" tickets (or most expensive, really). Some sites might have an actual option to select the best available tickets making it easier.

 

One important thing: Don't forget to stop the macro if you get through to booking. This is important because it'll start refreshing again if you click through to for example pay with PayPal. This almost ruined it for us. But with a few more attempts the macro ended up selecting four Grand Tier Box tickets for us. First on one computer and then immediately after on another. We then booked them in separate names.

 

I wanted to test this before sharing. Apart from the hiccup it turned out to be beneficial for us. So if you feel comfortable messing around with stuff like this go ahead and try.

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gai

gai

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this is an awesome idea! i am a developer too. didn't think of using automated test integration add-ons for basically spamming the seller :)

just a note for future references: this is specifically for the said seller (gigs and tours?) website. possibly it will change for other seller websites. thought of adding this here since one slight coding error could mess up the whole thing.

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theprospekt

theprospekt

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this is an awesome idea! i am a developer too. didn't think of using automated test integration add-ons for basically spamming the seller :)

just a note for future references: this is specifically for the said seller (gigs and tours?) website. possibly it will change for other seller websites. thought of adding this here since one slight coding error could mess up the whole thing.

 

Glad you like it. :) And yes: this is specifically for Gigs and Tours. But the basic principle can be applied pretty much everywhere.

 

 

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theprospekt

theprospekt

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Nice! If there is another sale on G&T, I'll give it a go, though is there any way to make it stop at step 3 so I can select where I want to be?

 

I thought a lot about this too.

 

You have to keep one thing in mind, though: speed. I got impatient a couple of times and stopped the macro to choose myself. But what I chose would be gone before I got the chance to click buy. The power of this is that it decides instantly.

 

You could get ambitious and make it prefer certain ticket types over others. But I figured the most important thing was getting in! :) I might experiment with it the next time I need tickets.

 

 

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theprospekt

theprospekt

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Thank you for this, i'll be saving this to my bookmarks. Deserves a contributor point too! ;)

 

Thanks! Glad you like it. :)

 

I was thinking maybe we could collect macros for different sites (like this one for Gigs and Tours) somewhere in the forum?

 

Maybe for the next time me or someone else with the skills can make a macro beforehand for everyone to use.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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theprospekt

theprospekt

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How many times does it loop? Thinking about its worth in refreshing tonight and tomorrow for any tickets that appear, haven't tried it yet

 

It refreshes as many times as you insert the test case in the test suite. Basically you need to create a test case and save it. Then save the test suite and insert the test case again and again. Tip: copy a bunch of shortcuts to the test case (like say a hundred) for bulk insertion.

 

Really I should just email my files to you but I don't have the files handy right now.

 

 

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theprospekt

theprospekt

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The test case: http://www.filedropper.com/tickets

The test suite: http://www.filedropper.com/ticketssuite

 

Put the files in the same folder and open the test *suite* in Selenium. Then 1500 test copies of the test case will appear.

 

If you make changes to the test case, save the test case and reopen the test suite by closing Selenium and starting over.

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  • 4 months later...
cheeetaz

cheeetaz

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I guess this wont work when you are not near a computer? Not like a 100% automatic thing you set up and it just books you a ticket, without you being present at that time :D

Because all i'll have is my smartphone tomorrow.

 

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theprospekt

theprospekt

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Wow okay.

 

You guys, if you want to give this a shot I need to make a new script for the site that's selling the tickets.

 

The script is Gigs and Tours specific. I'm assuming it's not them who are selling this time.

 

 

[smoke is rising from the houses]

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theprospekt

theprospekt

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I guess this wont work when you are not near a computer? Not like a 100% automatic thing you set up and it just books you a ticket, without you being present at that time :D

Because all i'll have is my smartphone tomorrow.

 

Sent via Tapatalk

 

You'll need to be near at least one, preferably several, computers for this to work, yes.

 

 

[smoke is rising from the houses]

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Batman

Batman

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Wow okay.

 

You guys, if you want to give this a shot I need to make a new script for the site that's selling the tickets.

 

The script is Gigs and Tours specific. I'm assuming it's not them who are selling this time.

 

 

[smoke is rising from the houses]

I sent you a PM :cheesy:

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theprospekt

theprospekt

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The test case: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1jnvlew80qg4b45/Tickets?dl=0

The test suite: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rq10a2udghwe7z8/TicketsSuite

 

Important stuff

* Save the case and the suite in the same directory

* Open the suite (not the case) in Selenium

* It's meant to run on the "Info" page (the button that leads to that page is gray now, but will turn yellow and say "Tickets" when the sale starts - it's the same page so you'll be ahead if you just go to Info right away)

* The script will choose the first, the best tickets starting from the top

* Where it says label=1, 1 is the number of tickets. Can be 1 or 2, change if needed

* Don't forget to stop the script if you get through to booking, or it'll mess everything up for you

* Otherwise leave the script running and let it do its job, it'll have the best chances

* The script won't go any further than just selecting x number of tickets and clicking Buy after which the tickets will be reserved for x minutes. The rest of the booking process you must complete yourself, so you'll have an edge if you create an account and log in before hand

 

Hope it's useful. :)

 

 

[smoke is rising from the houses]

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