Taylor Swift tickets: Pa. AG asks for consumer complaints

PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) -- Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro wants to hear from you if you've had trouble, trouble, trouble buying tickets from Ticketmaster. It comes in the wake of the Taylor Swift Eras Tour presale controversy.

Shapiro, Pennsylvania's governor-elect, tweeted Thursday his office is accepting consumer complaints with regard to Ticketmaster.

Pennsylvanians can file a complaint on the AG's website. The form will ask for your information, what business the complaint is about and details about the actual complaint. People can attach files to their complaints.

Ticketmaster said it's canceling Friday's planned general public sale for Swift's upcoming stadium tour because it doesn't have enough tickets.

The decision came two days after a presale event caused the site to crash and left many fans without tickets.

The ticketing company said in a statement Thursday two million tickets to The Eras tour next year were sold during presales on Tuesday, the most tickets ever sold on the platform in a single day.

Ticketmaster cited "extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand" as a reason for calling off Friday's sale.

Questions remain about how remaining tickets — and how many — would be sold. But Ticketmaster said about 1.5 million fans who had gone through an early verification process — called Verified Fan — were invited to purchase tickets and the remaining 2 million were placed on a waiting list.

A company representative said Ticketmaster is not involved in ticket resales for Swift's shows.

It's been a record year for Swift after releasing her latest album "Midnights," which also broke a Billboard record.

The 52-date Eras Tour kicks off March 17 in Glendale, Arizona, stops in Philadelphia for three shows in May and wraps up with five shows in Los Angeles ending Aug. 9. International dates will be announced as well. It's Swift's first tour since 2018.

But fans and families around the country battled it out with long queues and error messages to try to race to the checkout cart.

Ticketmaster said that the site was overwhelmed both by real people and bot attacks resulting in unprecedented traffic on their site. The statement said about 15% of interactions with the site had problems, including errors that caused people to lose tickets after they had waited in an online queue.

"While it's impossible for everyone to get tickets to these shows, we know we can do more to improve the experience and that's what we're focused on," the company statement said.

In:
• Pennsylvania
• Taylor Swift
• Josh Shapiro
• Ticketmaster