I had woken up at 6AM on Saturday because I was trying to buy some Hartford, CT Hamilton tickets. After ~10 minutes, I was able to find a pair of tickets. I then filled out my info and as soon as I submitted my order, I got this error.
Connecticut Regional Control
You have 11:40 to complete your purchase or your tickets will be released.
I then turned on my VPN thinking it was some sort of IP check due to “regional control” trying to check out. Same error. I then tried to ship to someone in the Northeast. Same error. The odd thing was that a reader who was based in the Northeast was able to buy and ship me tickets to Washington state. Thus I think if I had originated my ticket purchase from an IP in the Northeast I would have been fine.
An hour later I then tried to buy some Greeneville, SC Hamilton tickets. I got lucky and was able to buy pretty quickly and scored opening night tickets. When I went to check out, I saw this and aborted ship!
Another reader who was based around there was able to see a mailed option. Not sure if it was based on IP or address, but Greeneville wasn’t having out of town folks buying Hamilton tickets.
Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong; I’m actually happy that Hamilton is doing this. As much as I enjoy reselling Hamilton tickets, I do want local folks to have a fighting chance of scoring face value tickets. My only issue is that they didn’t tell people ahead of time that they were doing this. Sure they don’t have to notify customers beforehand, but if someone was traveling or having out of town friends and family try to buy for them, they were screwed. The least they could do was post that they were doing this instead of wasting our times. It’d be like you traveling to Austin, TX to wait 4 hours in line for Franklin’s BBQ just to be told “Sorry, we only sell to locals.”
Yeah easy money is gone 😪😪