Ticketmaster Does In Boss Fans Once Again

Ticketmaster does it again. In February, the quasi-monopoly botched sales for Bruce Springsteen's current tour and sent fans to Ticketmaster's TicketsNow.com scalper site, where they had to buy seats at huge markups.

Last week, Tickets- Now said it sold too many tickets for the Springsteen show at DC's Verizon Center. The company called fans, who thought they had locked up seats at hundreds of dollars apiece to tell them the bad news. TicketsNow said it will give people refunds along with free tickets in the cheap seats.

But I doubt they're happy. Baltimore resident Joe Compton said he got locked out of buying Springsteen seats at face value from Ticketmaster in early February. So he went to TicketsNow, he says, paid $440 for two tickets plus another $80 in nuisance charges and was told the tix would be mailed in early May. They never came.

"They offered a full refund of my money and free tix up in the nosebleed at the Verizon Center Monday," he e-mailed late last week. "Reluctantly I took this offer, but told them I remain both skeptical and suspicious of these 'glitches.' "

Good thing Ticketmaster doesn't do anything important, like fly planes or run nuclear energy plants.