
What Ticketmaster is doing about technical debt - kilimchoi
http://tech.ticketmaster.com/2015/06/30/what-ticketmaster-is-doing-about-technical-debt/
======
degenerate
Look at them cleverly placing themselves next to prominent systems like the
air traffic controller, while toting their millions of lines like it's some
sort of accomplishment. For a business that really only needs to accomplish
two things to make their customers happy: 1) print tickets and 2) stop
scalpers, they do absolutely terrible at those 2 things. I don't mean terrible
as in they do the job poorly, it's just that they care 0% about the user
experience during the entire ticketing process from end-to-end.

~~~
smackfu
Ticketmaster is essentially enterprise software-as-a-service: the people
buying it (the venues) are not the people using it. From that perspective,
complaints are not surprising at all.

~~~
walshemj
Agreed I helped out a uk cinema system with their system based on the
effective monopoly supplier's system.

It was "interesting" in the Chinese sense but an absolute PITA to work with.

And that's not mention the WAN linking the cinemas based on packet radio that
blocked :-)

~~~
tantalor
> "interesting" in the Chinese sense

What's that?

~~~
duckmysick
Possibly a reference to a supposed ancient Chinese saying "May you live in
interesting times". "Interesting" here means dangerous and troubling in
contrast to "uninteresting" or peaceful and stable.

It's actually neither Chinese nor ancient:
[http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/may-you-live-in-
interesti...](http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/may-you-live-in-interesting-
times.html)

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nickpsecurity
Seems nobody has reviewed the actual article... So, I will: it's great. I
could see this model, esp illustrations, getting somewhere with lay management
that run things by the numbers and ROI. I'd like to try it on bankers given
they're experts on getting people stuck in debt. Last thing they want to do is
be caught in their own type of trap. I'd like to see more work like this, esp
improving manual measurement areas.

~~~
lectrick
Can you summarize how they _quantitatively_ measure aspects of tech debt?
Because that seems to be a hard problem and I kind of don't believe that they
have pulled off this feat

~~~
nickpsecurity
It's described on the page along with qualitative measurements they use. They
used each where it made sense to produce something pretty solid for management
to work with. The alternatives are currently... I don't know any...

So, until I see them, I think they did a good job going from using a vague
concept to practical metrics. Baby steps, for sure, but with immediate, payoff
potential.

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KingMob
Not to disparage the hard work of the techies there, but as a de facto
monopoly, Ticketmaster can probably survive technical debt better than most.

~~~
astrodust
They could just add yet another surcharge to cover it and what can we do?

Basically nothing.

~~~
joezydeco
"Server operation fee....$15.00"

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chiph
"Server Delivery fee: $11.25"

Yeah, I'm beating on them. But I worked at a Ticketmaster outlet in college,
and the convenience fee was only $2. That paid for the special ticket printing
machine, the leased line to their network, and the blank ticket stock & ink
rolls. These days, they don't have those costs as the customers are the ones
supplying the hardware, internet connection, and doing the printing. So
there's no reason for the high fees.

Story time: Our best customers? Grateful Dead fans. They were happy to sit
anywhere. Worst customers? Sports fans. "Can you show me that other seat? Can
I see better from there?" "I'm sorry, that seat was sold to someone else."

~~~
smackfu
>These days, they don't have those costs as the customers are the ones
supplying the hardware, internet connection, and doing the printing. So
there's no reason for the high fees.

Unless you buy tickets online, as the vast majority of people do.

~~~
chiph
I think you misunderstand. The customers (people buying tickets) are using
their own computers, their own internet connection, and their own printers
(with that oh-so-cheap ink) to buy and print their event tickets these days.
So Ticketmaster is no longer supplying all that specialized equipment to the
stores and no longer has those costs.

~~~
kbenson
For some venues and ticket types, you can just let them scan the PDF on your
phone. For a subset of those, there's an actual mobile ticket type where the
only way to get in is to show the ticket from the TicketMaster/LiveNation app,
and there is no PDF.

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JTon
Firstly I'll admit, I don't buy many tickets in general. However the times I
used Ticketmaster I've had a neutral to positive experience. I'm always a bit
annoyed at the service fees. But it takes little time to buy them, and the
tickets go straight into my inbox. Whatever. I think there are more pressing
issues to complain about

~~~
PirateDave
If you've ever tried to purchase tickets for a concert that you know would be
sold out, the process is horrendous.

I mean, they know when they'll have a surge in customers (there's a freakin
countdown clock to the purchase time) and yet they still can't set up
something more elastic that actually allows me to load the page?

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ape4
Could somebody please disrupt this business! No user likes Ticketmaster and
their "service fees".

~~~
jasode
You can't disrupt Ticketmaster's service fees because _it 's the venues and
the peformers_ that are also profiting from those service fees.

Apparently, Ticketmaster's business model is based on taking the negative
public relations hit for charging higher prices on behalf of their customers.

If you create a startup called CheaperTickets.com with the noble intention of
not charging those hated service fees, you won't get any customers. (Keep in
mind it's _the venues & the artists_ that are the real customers of
Ticketmaster and not the ticket buyers). The venues _want_ the lucrative cut
of the service fees while Ticketmaster gladly takes the heat.

[1][http://www.laweekly.com/music/ticketmaster-and-servants-
band...](http://www.laweekly.com/music/ticketmaster-and-servants-bands-get-
cut-of-service-fee-2158605)

[2][http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1xlt0i/til_ti...](http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1xlt0i/til_ticketmasters_service_charge_fees_are_added/)

~~~
jakejake
I don't know TM's numbers, but I know it is correct that processing fees are
not always going 100% to the ticketing company. My company is in the music
business and one of our products is for internal ticket sales. We collect fees
on behalf of the seller. The sellers portion varies, but is usually about 75%
of the fee - meaning that we, the processor, are only getting 25% of the fee
that the customer sees.

~~~
cdcarter
Similarly, I've worked for an organization that charges a per ticket service
fee. They take a 100% cut off this, when you consider their ticketing contract
was negotiated as a fixed annual cost, not a per-ticket or %-of-revenue.

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surferbayarea
Strange how no-one here seems to have actually read the article. Do people
have thoughts on how they handle technical debt and manage code quality? This
was a well thought out way of structurally improving code quality in a code
base that supports a big business driving 10billion$+ transaction volume. Do
people have a better solution to what they should be doing?

RE:disrupting their business model, why is charging money for a service wrong?
You cannot keep things for free by burning VC money. That only lasts so
long...

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run4yourlives2
Technical Debt Fee: $15.00.

Problem solved, no?

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nanis
I never had a good experience using Ticketmaster. I doubt more tests is going
to solve that.

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s1lver
What about moral debt?

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programminggeek
They couldn't easily define or decide what technical debt was? Wow.

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subpopular
How an individual business has more lines of code than the largest and most
complex scientific experiment ever conceived by human beings is...I dunno,
embarrassing?

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antrover
What is Ticketmaster doing about outrageous fees?

~~~
knodi123
chuckling nervously?

