Customer service with Telecharge is light years better than Ticketmaster. The Telecharge agents have so much experience with Broadway, and they are so much more helpful if something goes wrong. The ticketmaster agents answer calls from everything from Broadway to Dallas Cowboys football tickets to rodeos in Idaho. They have no knowledge of the specific needs of the Broadway ticket buyer, and in my experience, they are in general much "colder" and apathetic. It is also very easy to switch dates for a show with Telecharge if your schedule changes and you can't use your tickets. Good luck with Ticketmaster, they won't help at all. And in my experience, they act like they could care less.
I recently drove 30 miles to a Ticketmster Josh Groban concert and got there to find out it was cancelled because he was sick. I didn't receive an email frm Ticketmaster before or after the cancellation, and it has been 2 weeks. I called Ticketmaster and spent 10 minutes on hold to ask what was going on, and the agent said she did not have any information and did not know if my original tickets were valid for a make up date in the future.
I prefer Telecharge so strongly that when I am planning a trip to New York, I book tickets for any show I am interested in that is being sold through Telecharge as soon as the tickets are available. If a show is offering tickets through Ticketmaster, I am much more gun shy and selective .... I only book shows I know I really really want to see like American Psycho at the last minute when I know my schedule is rock solid confirmed. In the end, I end up purchasing tickets for about 25% of the shows I am interested in seeing with Ticketmaster, and a much higher percentage with Telecharge.
Also, Telecharge allows you to select any available seats from the map even if you are leaving a single seat on its own. With Ticketmaster, if you are trying to buy 2 or 3 or 4 tickets, and by doing that you leave a single seat available, the transaction won't go through.
I recently called in to Telecharge because I had China Doll tickets and my plans had changed and I was unable to use the tickets. I was also unable to get back to New York before the show closes ... they called the producers office and/or the box office and simply refunded my money ... no questions asked. Ticketmaster wouldn't even have offered to call the producers or box office.
Maybe Ticketmaster offers more exposure to tourists and the general public, and maybe Ticketmaster offered a better rate, as someone suggested. But at least for me, as a person who has had a lot of experience with both companies by attending about 30-50 Broadway performances per year, I am sure I will end up attending fewer Jujamcyn shows because of this change.
Updated On: 11/6/15 at 02:42 PM