08-24-2018, 05:31 AM
Well, I checked the info from last year and the system was more similar than I remembered. I had forgotten that they did insert a single mention of the possibility of "random selection" but it was very brief and somewhat buried in the email. This year, "selected" is referred to three times which is why it seemed new and more ominous to me. There was no mention of a time limit last year as Dan pointed out. Last year, they also said that if they were unsuccessful sending a purchase code by text, then they would send it by email. This year there's no mention of that alternative (hopefully it still exists and they just forgot to say so).
I've been lucky in past years and was always able to get tickets in the area we prefer within 15 minutes or so. There are always a bunch of offered seats that need to be thrown back before decent seats pop up. @Nancy - I'm fairly certain they don't try to offer the best seats first. The order the seats are offered seems random, as if they consider the entire floor area to be equally desirable, and it's been that way for years at my local venue. And other fans rejecting early tickets adds to the randomness, of course. I don't think they actually try to push the crappier seats first, although it looks that way sometimes.
I've been lucky in past years and was always able to get tickets in the area we prefer within 15 minutes or so. There are always a bunch of offered seats that need to be thrown back before decent seats pop up. @Nancy - I'm fairly certain they don't try to offer the best seats first. The order the seats are offered seems random, as if they consider the entire floor area to be equally desirable, and it's been that way for years at my local venue. And other fans rejecting early tickets adds to the randomness, of course. I don't think they actually try to push the crappier seats first, although it looks that way sometimes.