What does that have to do with automation? "orders over the limit will be cancelled" vs "if you go over the limit all your orders will be cancelled" is a policy decision, it has nothing to do with automation.
Their "orders over limit" condition is implemented incorrectly. I'm seeing stories of people ordering 2x2 even after being okay'd by PAX to order the next set because it was their fuck up in this mess too. It's also being pointed at address duplicates for a hard 100% ticket recall when that seems retarded.
Either the planning was done poorly or the implementation was done incorrectly, it takes both to produce a consumer program.
I work in automation, there's no reason for a hard ban to reduce a person to 0 tickets... Unfortunately poor planing and decisions on their part have fucked it up for a lot of people. You would think with the price hike they would have hired more competent people. It's unfortunate
What does that have to do with automation? "orders over the limit will be cancelled" vs "if you go over the limit all your orders will be cancelled" is a policy decision, it has nothing to do with automation.
Because based on my own experience and commentary on Twitter, many people had only four tickets (i.e., within the limit) and got all of those cancelled (i.e., went to zero). And the list of people to cancel in that manner was almost certainly obtained in an automated manner, by a program going over ticket purchasing.
Determining "this is several separate people who have the same address buying tickets legitimately" (communal households like college students renting a house together, large families who want to go as a group, etc.) versus "this is a scalper buying a bunch of tickets they're shipping to themselves to resell" is an automation issue, if your intent is to winnow out and block the second one in an automated manner. And, I note, an extremely hard problem to solve through automation; as I said, computers can't read intent, and so the two scenarios likely look very similar. In both cases, you likely have more than one order shipping to the same address, but purchased under different names/cards.
As I said before, I think how they chose to act on those automated results was incorrect; they should've had a grace period and a chance to appeal, etc., rather than a warning, 30 minute pause, and cancellation. But people in the first category showing up erroneously in the second (and getting stuff cancelled), yes, that's an automation issue.
I work in automation, there's no reason for a hard ban to reduce a person to 0 tickets... Unfortunately poor planing and decisions on their part have fucked it up for a lot of people. You would think with the price hike they would have hired more competent people. It's unfortunate
What does that have to do with automation? "orders over the limit will be cancelled" vs "if you go over the limit all your orders will be cancelled" is a policy decision, it has nothing to do with automation.
I think his point is that it's not difficult to automate a process that will flag transactions that are clearly suspect and refund those rather than a blanket rule that says 'You may buy no more than 4 passes of each type.'
I was referring to the fact the entire order(s) were cancelled, not amounts 'over limits', which is entirely a policy thing. It's possible the script was broken and misflagged some people.
Ticket limit policys never have an intent factors to them. If you want to legitimately buy more then posted limits, a different name, address and credit card is always needed, always.
The sad part of this thread, is that prices go up because of the increased demand from reducing the supply. Scalpers who held on will win. If they would have done this automated process in May, there wouldn't be $1000s invested into trips, forcing some of us to buy from scalpers.
They really need to acknowledge that scalping cannot be prevented, and the emotional and financial pain caused by them today, is just as bad or worse than the financial pain caused by scalpers. We should not blame scalpers for today's automated cancellations. Lack of business sense and knowledge leads to poor processes and decision making. It comes with the territory, seeing how the expedited growth of PAX is a phenomenon (and a special one at that). Lack of experience with sudden success leads to these kinds of mistakes in all types of business & organizations.
Remember that PAX used to have the worse 3rd party shipper for tickets, and it took them years to acknowledge and improve. We are all thankful for that. Now, we can only hope they improve this over time, with the focus on helping true customers attend the event, rather than wasting resources fighting scalpers. Funny thing, right now I'm wishing there were more scalpers fighting for my business, so prices on ebay were lower.
My heart goes out to those that we 100% honest in their intent, as well as those who have it in writing from PAX support that there unique situation was OK in May, only to have them go back on their word unexpectedly today.
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bacon_avengerDefender of Pork ProductsPacific NW, USARegistered Userregular
I just caught up with the thread. Oh boy, this concerns me greatly as I am one of the people who were affected by the bug, limiting my initial purchase to a pair of each day, and was lucky enough to get back in and place a second order for two more sets.
So far, showclix still shows the correct amount of passes for the two orders, and I've not received any cancellation email, but the extra set has already been claimed by coworkers and their friends.
Going to have to keep a very close eye on this one.
PAX Prime 2022 Checklist:[ ]Hotel [ ]Time Off [ ]Bobcats [ ]Challenge Coin [ ]Forum Badge
I was referring to the fact the entire order(s) were cancelled, not amounts 'over limits', which is entirely a policy thing. It's possible the script was broken and misflagged some people.
Ticket limit policys never have an intent factors to them. If you want to legitimately buy more then posted limits, a different name, address and credit card is always needed, always.
The problem is there's a lot of confusion; the message that went out said "you will be left with four tickets" and many people were left with zero. So even the cancellation message and the end result don't match, leading to a lot of frazzled people doing the kermit-arms thing.
Realistically, all we can do is wait for word back from the PAX Prime folks about what happens next. Whether that's "oh, man, our bad, we're so sorry, going to try to address this with X, Y, and Z" or "nothing we can do, tough luck, might want to hit up eBay", we won't know until they come out and say. But in the meantime, lots of us are probably theorycrafting as to how this happened as a bit of stress-relief. After all, we're gamers; we're often trained to look for patterns and mechanics in things as a way of trying to get past an obstacle.
(Now to see if there's anything useful in my inventory, or if I missed a key item a couple zones back and need to reload...)
The sad part of this thread, is that prices go up because of the increased demand from reducing the supply. Scalpers who held on will win. If they would have done this automated process in May, there wouldn't be $1000s invested into trips, forcing some of us to buy from scalpers.
They really need to acknowledge that scalping cannot be prevented, and the emotional and financial pain caused by them today, is just as bad or worse than the financial pain caused by scalpers. We should not blame scalpers for today's automated cancellations. Lack of business sense and knowledge leads to poor processes and decision making. It comes with the territory, seeing how the expedited growth of PAX is a phenomenon (and a special one at that). Lack of experience with sudden success leads to these kinds of mistakes in all types of business & organizations.
Remember that PAX used to have the worse 3rd party shipper for tickets, and it took them years to acknowledge and improve. We are all thankful for that. Now, we can only hope they improve this over time, with the focus on helping true customers attend the event, rather than wasting resources fighting scalpers. Funny thing, right now I'm wishing there were more scalpers fighting for my business, so prices on ebay were lower.
My heart goes out to those that we 100% honest in their intent, as well as those who have it in writing from PAX support that there unique situation was OK in May, only to have them go back on their word unexpectedly today.
As King_of_Dew said in the part I bolded, it's completely unacceptable that this has happened nearly 2 months after the badges went on sale. Almost assuredly every attendee that is traveling in has already made travel arrangements at this stage in the game, yet it was decided that now is the time to inform everyone about the problem?
I've had the luxury to have a desk job where I can purchase tickets and I've bought tickets for 8 people (myself included) for the past 4 years and haven't had a single problem until this year. Luckly for me I live in the area, but the 7 other people live on the east coast and have already made air travel plans and reserved AirBNB's.
I quickly responded to the cancellation email this morning to state my case and plead for something, I just hope that it's not in vain.
The sad part of this thread, is that prices go up because of the increased demand from reducing the supply. Scalpers who held on will win. If they would have done this automated process in May, there wouldn't be $1000s invested into trips, forcing some of us to buy from scalpers.
They really need to acknowledge that scalping cannot be prevented, and the emotional and financial pain caused by them today, is just as bad or worse than the financial pain caused by scalpers. We should not blame scalpers for today's automated cancellations. Lack of business sense and knowledge leads to poor processes and decision making. It comes with the territory, seeing how the expedited growth of PAX is a phenomenon (and a special one at that). Lack of experience with sudden success leads to these kinds of mistakes in all types of business & organizations.
Remember that PAX used to have the worse 3rd party shipper for tickets, and it took them years to acknowledge and improve. We are all thankful for that. Now, we can only hope they improve this over time, with the focus on helping true customers attend the event, rather than wasting resources fighting scalpers. Funny thing, right now I'm wishing there were more scalpers fighting for my business, so prices on ebay were lower.
My heart goes out to those that we 100% honest in their intent, as well as those who have it in writing from PAX support that there unique situation was OK in May, only to have them go back on their word unexpectedly today.
As King_of_Dew said in the part I bolded, it's completely unacceptable that this has happened nearly 2 months after the badges went on sale. Almost assuredly every attendee that is traveling in has already made travel arrangements at this stage in the game, yet it was decided that now is the time to inform everyone about the problem?
I've had the luxury to have a desk job where I can purchase tickets and I've bought tickets for 8 people (myself included) for the past 4 years and haven't had a single problem until this year. Luckly for me I live in the area, but the 7 other people live on the east coast and have already made air travel plans and reserved AirBNB's.
I quickly responded to the cancellation email this morning to state my case and plead for something, I just hope that it's not in vain.
That was the worst part. I've rented out a place for 10 of us on AirBnB to stay together for $1400 and friends have spent a few hundred on train and plane tickets. Some of them waited a month out to see if anything about tickets getting canceled would come up. I responded 20 minutes after receiving the e-mail this morning and haven't heard anything back, but I'm seeing people get a flat "There's nothing we can do. Sorry." My fingers are still crossed.
I hope we get a response from Khoo at some point in this thread. I'm hearing from a lot of people (esp. on reddit) that they followed the policy and were still hit by the automated system, and that's unacceptable if @Official_PAX said one thing (e.g. 2 orders of 2 were fine) and then ReedPOP decided otherwise a month and a half later.
For the record, two orders of two full sets (aka, 4 for Friday, 4 for Saturday, 4 for Sunday, and 4 for Monday - 16 badges total) will NOT get you flagged.
Emails were sent to folks that went above and beyond this. If you feel this is a mistake, you're more than welcome to contact pax_questions@paxsite.com.
edit: Also, as some of you have noted, there are actually different tiers of actions being taken against those that purchased more than the limit (three different tiers to be exact), depending on how egregious the violation was). And for those wondering, this impacted approximately 3% of all orders.
For the record, two orders of two full sets (aka, 4 for Friday, 4 for Saturday, 4 for Sunday, and 4 for Monday - 16 badges total) will NOT get you flagged.
Emails were sent to folks that went above and beyond this. If you feel this is a mistake, you're more than welcome to contact pax_questions@paxsite.com.
Yay! Good to know. Would it be possible to get further clarification on whether the four set limit is per person or per household? The impression many people seemed to have at ordering time was that two people at the same physical address could each order 4 full sets without issue. Indeed, the text quoted on the policies at time of order, and re-quoted in the cancellation mail this morning, was (bolding mine):
PLEASE NOTE: In order to keep things fair, we currently have badge limits of 4 per person (per badge type). If we determine that you are ordering under different names and multiple addresses, all of your orders will be cancelled immediately.
The first part seems to imply that there'd be no problem with two separate people at the same address buying four badges each. However, based on many of people's cancellation stories (including my own), it seems as if this is being interpreted as four per address, not four per person. If that's the case—if four per household is the limit—then so be it, and there's perhaps no point in trying to follow up further. But it'd be good to know, if so!
Either way, thank you for helping to shed a little light on whether or not the two-order thing was a factor in the cancellations.
For the record, two orders of two full sets (aka, 4 for Friday, 4 for Saturday, 4 for Sunday, and 4 for Monday - 16 badges total) will NOT get you flagged.
Emails were sent to folks that went above and beyond this. If you feel this is a mistake, you're more than welcome to contact pax_questions@paxsite.com.
edit: Also, as some of you have noted, there are actually different tiers of actions being taken against those that purchased more than the limit (three different tiers to be exact), depending on how egregious the violation was). And for those wondering, this impacted approximately 3% of all orders.
I just registered to ask you about this.
I ordered 4 sets of tickets a total of 16 total for me and my three other friends. During the time when the tickets went on sale, my GF was at my house at the time. She ordered two sets of tickets for herself. She used her own billing and mailing address, her own name, and her own credit card. As per the policy I followed and she followed it. How come our tickets got canceled and refunded outright? Is it because it's under the same IP when we did the order (she was on her cellphone, while I was on the computer during the queue)? Anyways we don't live together and I'm the only one in my house that purchased tickets going to my address.
I talked to a fine gentleman named Shurad (forgive me if I spelt it wrong) at the number that's been going around on reddit to call. And he looked under my account and saw I only purchased a total of 4 sets (16 tickets). And he doesn't know why it got flagged. He also noted on my account about our phone call as well. I also sent an email with my entire PayPal transaction history to show I didn't order any other tickets and my purchase confirmation as well for a total of 4 sets.
We can also provide drivers license and any other form of identification to prove we are own individual (per person - show policy).
Am I out of luck despite following the policy and not ordering more than 4 sets myself, or can this be remedied; so me and my friends can still get our passes and go to the event?
For the record, two orders of two full sets (aka, 4 for Friday, 4 for Saturday, 4 for Sunday, and 4 for Monday - 16 badges total) will NOT get you flagged.
Emails were sent to folks that went above and beyond this. If you feel this is a mistake, you're more than welcome to contact pax_questions@paxsite.com.
edit: Also, as some of you have noted, there are actually different tiers of actions being taken against those that purchased more than the limit (three different tiers to be exact), depending on how egregious the violation was). And for those wondering, this impacted approximately 3% of all orders.
I ordered two sets of three passes (2 for Friday, 2 for Saturday, 2 for Sunday). My order was cancelled. No one else lives in my house that ordered tickets. My credit card was not used for another order. There is nothing that should have caused my order to be cancelled. I have called and they told me to e-mail. I have e-mailed and have not received a response.
I believe there must be some kind of error in the system as in my case my badges were cancelled as well and I only purchased tickets for each day. I did not purchase more on another card. I did not purchase more with any other name or on the same card. I have an email in to pax_questions@paxsite.com with no response since this morning when I received the email. I am upset that they were cancelled without warning and it seems I might be out tickets even though I purchased correctly.
Just to clarify, nothing changed this year regarding our policy on this. We were no more or less strict in our pass than previous years.
@packetdancer Functionally, your mailing address is one of the ways we link orders - the logic being that if you have roommates and all want to go, you should be able to cover that in a single order.
@hideoshikaze@schmeckle@alkalin43 Your badges were cancelled because of an entirely different reason, but I can assure you, it was not a mistake. You're more than welcome to email pax_questions@paxsite.com.
The fact you posted one after the other actually makes me think you might know each other.
Just adding that I was also affected and did not order more than 4 of a single ticket. On may 7th I purchased 2/2/2/2. I also called during the period where they allowed you to buy more if you were affected by the glitch and bought 1/2/1/0. So my total tickets were 3/4/3/2. These are the only tickets being sent to my household and the only tickets associated with my e-mail, IP address, credit card and name so I have to believe the automated process accidentally flagged some people it shouldn't have.
I hope this all gets resolved soon but I am a little upset that some people who purchased over 4 sets tickets simply had their order reduced to 4 sets when my entire order was under 4 sets and was reduced to zero.
Or we posted around the same time because there was a recent development from PA staff so we thought we might actually get a question answered? It looks like @UrDraco had the same issue, but since he posted 15 minutes later, he must know me as well, right?
I do not know any of those people at all actually. My friend's were unable to get tickets so I chose to sell them. Perhaps I was ignorant to thinking I could sell them. Was I supposed to just be out $160?
@packetdancer Functionally, your mailing address is one of the ways we link orders - the logic being that if you have roommates and all want to go, you should be able to cover that in a single order.
Ah. Our group of folks who attend together each year only has one or two people who can get to a computer and get the tickets (usually my housemate and I); we both work in tech, but other friends (who may be on call for customer service stuff, or out walking the floor on a nursing shift) cannot easily get to the computer during the sale window. As such, it's always been up to us to grab the tickets for the group, but for 7-8 people going each year, we've always been able to split the order between two people and cover everyone without issue.
At any rate, while I'm really disappointed our group's going to have to break with tradition this year, I suppose I can understand the policy. We'll try to make do by badge-passing and such so that everyone gets a little time in the expo.
That said, I would politely suggest that the phrasing of the policy might need to be amended for clarity's sake. Since it sounds that it really genuinely is a per-household limit of four sets of badges, it should be called out that way instead of phrasing it as "four passes per person" on the ordering page. We assumed with two people ordering, we'd be able to get the usual allotment of passes to cover our group without issue under that policy; if it had been clear it was per address this year, we'd have made sure to try to phone someone else in the usual crew to order instead.
Thank you for at least giving an honest answer about it, so we can start planning accordingly.
Just to clarify, nothing changed this year regarding our policy on this. We were no more or less strict in our pass than previous years.
@packetdancer Functionally, your mailing address is one of the ways we link orders - the logic being that if you have roommates and all want to go, you should be able to cover that in a single order.
@hideoshikaze@schmeckle@alkalin43 Your badges were cancelled because of an entirely different reason, but I can assure you, it was not a mistake. You're more than welcome to email pax_questions@paxsite.com.
The fact you posted one after the other actually makes me think you might know each other.
I have absolutely no idea who those other two are. I came over from reddit when someone posted that you responded to the thread.
Other than a mistake, what possible reason could they cancel my tickets for? I purchased them for me and my friends. The guy that looked into my account also said there were no notes in it and that I don't have a history of "scalping" nor have I even attempted to do such a thing. It's me and my friends that planned this trip out. We paid for airbnb and also flight costs as well.
I'm genuinely confused as to why they got canceled and how it wasn't a mistake.
For the record, two orders of two full sets (aka, 4 for Friday, 4 for Saturday, 4 for Sunday, and 4 for Monday - 16 badges total) will NOT get you flagged.
Emails were sent to folks that went above and beyond this. If you feel this is a mistake, you're more than welcome to contact pax_questions@paxsite.com.
edit: Also, as some of you have noted, there are actually different tiers of actions being taken against those that purchased more than the limit (three different tiers to be exact), depending on how egregious the violation was). And for those wondering, this impacted approximately 3% of all orders.
I'm just throwing my hands up into the air hoping pax_questions will clarify at some point for me.
Out of curiosity though, why did it take so long for the cancellations to roll out? 2 years ago, when passes were canceled it only took a week maybe 2. This notification came almost 2 months later after people have already paid for housing and travel expenses.
Also waiting for an answer from pax_questions, but I'm not sure how to take Robert's statement. He mentions that roommates should be able to get enough tickets on one order, then is that confirmation that tickets are not in fact 4 per person, but rather 4 per household?
If so, I don't see how we are supposed to be able to legitimately get tickets. We are a multi-family dwelling with several adults and kids, and we had two different people order tickets with their own visas for the lot of us. This is the same way we did it last year (although we couldn't get the full allotment last year due to sellouts, it was still two people, two cards, same billing address, and we paid scalpers for the other days .)
I understand no policy can be 100% effective, but I'm hoping you guys have the resources to look at these cases individually so I don't have to be the bearer of bad news. Can provide ID, can arrange to pick up day of event.. anything to show we are a large family, not scalpers.
the logic being that if you have roommates and all want to go, you should be able to cover that in a single order.
I fail to see how multiple people living at the same address can be reasonably expected to coordinate a non-refundable purchase that is only available for an hour at an unspecified time and date. Then, am I to understand that we're expected to hold on to any inadvertently purchased extra badges for a months long period of time without making arrangements to give extra badges to other attendees who would need to make purchase hotel and flight accommodations?
This seems extraordinarily burdensome Robert, especially considering cancelling such accommodations typically comes with a penalty, not to mention the fact that the stated rule was 4 per person, not 4 per household.
Other than a mistake, what possible reason could they cancel my tickets for? I purchased them for me and my friends. The guy that looked into my account also said there were no notes in it and that I don't have a history of "scalping" nor have I even attempted to do such a thing. It's me and my friends that planned this trip out. We paid for airbnb and also flight costs as well.
I like to have faith that the PAX folks will probably try to review and deal with as many of the appeals that have gone to pax_questions as they can; I'm sure their intent in this is to shut down scalpers and badge-hoarders rather than to ruin things for fans, especially those who've already bought plane tickets and hotel rooms. I'd expect it'll take days to sort through everything and clear up false positives, but I'm also reasonably certain they are trying to do that.
Actually I've already e-mail pax_questions@paxsite.com regarding my situation and I'm awaiting a response. I called as soon as I got the cancellation/refund confirmation. I hope we can get this resolved.
Other than a mistake, what possible reason could they cancel my tickets for? I purchased them for me and my friends. The guy that looked into my account also said there were no notes in it and that I don't have a history of "scalping" nor have I even attempted to do such a thing. It's me and my friends that planned this trip out. We paid for airbnb and also flight costs as well.
I like to have faith that the PAX folks will probably try to review and deal with as many of the appeals that have gone to pax_questions as they can; I'm sure their intent in this is to shut down scalpers and badge-hoarders rather than to ruin things for fans, especially those who've already bought plane tickets and hotel rooms. I'd expect it'll take days to sort through everything and clear up false positives, but I'm also reasonably certain they are trying to do that.
I don't mind them trying to do the good deed and shut down those people. Last year I spent $300 to get a 4 day pass to go to PAX. It truly sucks.
Heck I can even provide proof that these passes I got we're all accounted for, and they were in fact for my friends. We all live in Alaska and we have a group of 13 people going as a whole. Even have a Facebook group page to plan this all out. I just don't know why I got flagged other than me and my gf being on the same IP address during the purchase. She completed her order first. Then I completed mine after hers due to the bug, and I somehow managed to get it to get to 4 sets.
I'm really upset because this wasn't nice waking up to.
I just hope they can help me out.
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ClixThis guy I knowSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Boy did I pick the wrong time to contact pax_questions@paxsite.com with an issue regarding badges. I just moved so sent an email requesting an update to my shipping and billing address.
We have $1500 on a hotel for the weekend. I can't imagine you're situation, or others from out of state flying in to Seattle and get their tickets pulled. PAX to me and my gf, my friends, and roommates are basically our yearly vacation. We take a week off just to spend time in Seattle for this weekend. Meanwhile, people within the community assume we're hogging all the tickets and/or reselling them? We save our hard earned money for 1 week of the year and take time off from work...
My friends and I use this as an annual retreat. We're all older now with families, degrees, jobs, etc. It's a nice place for us to gather and hang out like we did when we were younger and could game all the time. However, the past 3 years PAX ticket sales have gone to shit. They hike the prices and remove 4 day sales, to do what? Still cancel tickets?
I've had to jump through hoops and battle for any tickets for my friends and me. At the very least, the first year they started doing cancellations they left me with the allowed "4" per house hold, but they canceled ALL of my tickets? What the fuck is that? I got the e-mail notification at 7:20 AM PST, I woke up and saw the email at 7:40 AM and sent them an e-mail begging them to not refund my tickets because everyone has everything planned out and paid for already. At 8:04 AM I got notification that my refund was being processed. Neither, paxquestions@reedexpo.com or pax_questions@paxsite.com have sent me any e-mails after I tried to dispute them.
Am i the only one who does not care for somebody who already received a warning for going over the limit and still tried it again. Im sure this works great in real life. "I am sorry officer, i was only speeding because i did it before and the police officer who stopped me gave me a warning before and not a ticket. Dang the past three years on this school zone has gone to shit". I think ill try that line when i get pulled over next
We have $1500 on a hotel for the weekend. I can't imagine you're situation, or others from out of state flying in to Seattle and get their tickets pulled. PAX to me and my gf, my friends, and roommates are basically our yearly vacation. We take a week off just to spend time in Seattle for this weekend. Meanwhile, people within the community assume we're hogging all the tickets and/or reselling them? We save our hard earned money for 1 week of the year and take time off from work...
My friends and I use this as an annual retreat. We're all older now with families, degrees, jobs, etc. It's a nice place for us to gather and hang out like we did when we were younger and could game all the time. However, the past 3 years PAX ticket sales have gone to shit. They hike the prices and remove 4 day sales, to do what? Still cancel tickets?
I've had to jump through hoops and battle for any tickets for my friends and me. At the very least, the first year they started doing cancellations they left me with the allowed "4" per house hold, but they canceled ALL of my tickets? What the fuck is that? I got the e-mail notification at 7:20 AM PST, I woke up and saw the email at 7:40 AM and sent them an e-mail begging them to not refund my tickets because everyone has everything planned out and paid for already. At 8:04 AM I got notification that my refund was being processed. Neither, paxquestions@reedexpo.com or pax_questions@paxsite.com have sent me any e-mails after I tried to dispute them.
Am i the only one who does not care for somebody who already received a warning for going over the limit and still tried it again. Im sure this works great in real life. "I am sorry officer, i was only speeding because i did it before and the police officer who stopped me gave me a warning before and not a ticket. Dang the past three years on this school zone has gone to shit". I think ill try that line when i get pulled over next
That's understandable. Although a blanket statement like that is a little cut 'n' dry in this situation. I didn't really think about it and I myself only went through and bought the a full set of 4x4 on my own. This is the 3rd year they've done cancelations. The first year I understood that I couldn't buy more than 4 on my own. That's fine, I was alright with keeping 4 and I ended up going to ebay for the rest at a severe price hike for my mistake. This second year I couldn't even get through the queue and which resulted in me going through all my friends and going on ebay, unfortunately at another severe price hike.
This year the order went differently. I had friends/funds wanting to purchase tickets, but didn't have the funds. So for my group who I had planned to stay at an airbnb, our tickets were purchased at 3 different locations. 3 Different CCs, however they were under my name, and by 3 different people...
Previously, tickets were retracted very shortly after the initial sale, within 1-2 weeks.
The CC front also probably wasn't a good idea, but before the whole scalper situation they had group pricing and 3-day passes that my friends got me while I was in college and couldn't pay up front. Now that I make good money I wanted to do the same for my current friends. In any case, the system is put in place to prevent scalping. I'm just a fellow gamer wanting to hang out with my fellow gamers/nerds.
In the end, in my situation, their system to prevent scalping causes me to have to pay those scalpers who didn't get their tickets revoked.
In any case, I was pretty riled up at the whole situation. And it didn't help seeing all the cancelations for the 2x2 incident and those people that have families larger than 4 getting punished.
You can feel however you want about it, I'm just waiting on pax_questions@paxsite.com to make a decision.
I've calmed down now, I'll just have to see what they say and if worse comes to worse lose out on about $800 on prepaid travel fees.
I don't know what to do about this myself. I can only think it was some sort of IP issue from ordering at the same house. hopefully someone that ordered didn't have my name either lol.
I'll probably hear from them in the morning with good news or something. I'm not too worried because I know for a fact it has to have been a mistake on the system.
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Kirby4LifeSumYungGuyIn a cabin in the woodsRegistered Userregular
So... Does this mean there will be a 2nd run on passes or they just gonna delete the extra passes from the system??
So... Does this mean there will be a 2nd run on passes or they just gonna delete the extra passes from the system??
Yeah, there have been reclaimed badge sales in the past around this time (June/July), so I'd assume they're doing it again this year. Keep your eyes on their Twitter if you're trying to purchase from this wave, since the reclaimed badges go fast.
So... Does this mean there will be a 2nd run on passes or they just gonna delete the extra passes from the system??
Yeah, there have been reclaimed badge sales in the past around this time (June/July), so I'd assume they're doing it again this year. Keep your eyes on their Twitter if you're trying to purchase from this wave, since the reclaimed badges go fast.
And set up all your page monitors.
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Kirby4LifeSumYungGuyIn a cabin in the woodsRegistered Userregular
So... Does this mean there will be a 2nd run on passes or they just gonna delete the extra passes from the system??
Yeah, there have been reclaimed badge sales in the past around this time (June/July), so I'd assume they're doing it again this year. Keep your eyes on their Twitter if you're trying to purchase from this wave, since the reclaimed badges go fast.
And set up all your page monitors.
I did this year for the first run of tickets but It was pointless... The page still said soon even though the tweet came out... Screw RefreshMonkey... Im going old school...
Here's the response I received after contacting paxquestions@reedexpo.com :
Hi,
Thanks for contacting us. Unfortunately, it appears our systems found you were in violation of our ticket purchasing policy, which is designed to reduce the resale of badges (also known as scalping) and instead get badges into the hands of actual consumers at face value. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Thanks,
PAX Customer Service
...since the response is rather vague, I'm hoping it means there is a possibility to re-instate our order. I'll keep updating as I receive more information.
In any case, I was pretty riled up at the whole situation. And it didn't help seeing all the cancelations for the 2x2 incident and those people that have families larger than 4 getting punished.
You can feel however you want about it, I'm just waiting on pax_questions@paxsite.com to make a decision.
I've calmed down now, I'll just have to see what they say and if worse comes to worse lose out on about $800 on prepaid travel fees.
I suspect that'll be true of a lot of people in the thread. Feeling calmer now, I mean.
Honestly, being a little heated yesterday isn't surprising; it was a bit rough for everyone hit by this, I think. Waking up to find out PAX tickets had vanished was a bit of a shock, and those of us affected didn't have a lot of answers about why things had happened; we had guesses and theories, but no more. With vacation plans and meetups with friends on the line—and in many cases money already spent on tickets and hotel—it's not too surprising that tempers would run a little high and nerves would be frazzled!
But by today, the initial shock's past and there's a little more clarity for folks; Robert confirmed that 2x2 orders won't have tripped the system, we know folks are starting to hear back from pax_questions, and so on. Like I said before, I have faith that the PAX Prime and Reed Expo folks aren't trying to ruin things for legitimate attendees. What would be the point? So I suspect they'll genuinely consider appeals and try to fix things for as many people as feasible.
They just may have a convention-center-sized pile of email to dig out of, first.
Personally, I'm taking this as a learning experience; next year, my housemate will have her badges shipped to the house and I'll have mine shipped to my office, so that we don't have multiple orders shipping to the same residential address and potentially tripping this issue. While no doubt the PAX/Reed Expo folks will have some takeaway data from this year about false positives in order to refine the anti-scalper measures next year, that's still an easy thing she and I can do to ensure there's one less potential case they have to review next time around.
In any case, I was pretty riled up at the whole situation. And it didn't help seeing all the cancelations for the 2x2 incident and those people that have families larger than 4 getting punished.
You can feel however you want about it, I'm just waiting on pax_questions@paxsite.com to make a decision.
I've calmed down now, I'll just have to see what they say and if worse comes to worse lose out on about $800 on prepaid travel fees.
I suspect that'll be true of a lot of people in the thread. Feeling calmer now, I mean.
Honestly, being a little heated yesterday isn't surprising; it was a bit rough for everyone hit by this, I think. Waking up to find out PAX tickets had vanished was a bit of a shock, and those of us affected didn't have a lot of answers about why things had happened; we had guesses and theories, but no more. With vacation plans and meetups with friends on the line—and in many cases money already spent on tickets and hotel—it's not too surprising that tempers would run a little high and nerves would be frazzled!
But by today, the initial shock's past and there's a little more clarity for folks; Robert confirmed that 2x2 orders won't have tripped the system, we know folks are starting to hear back from pax_questions, and so on. Like I said before, I have faith that the PAX Prime and Reed Expo folks aren't trying to ruin things for legitimate attendees. What would be the point? So I suspect they'll genuinely consider appeals and try to fix things for as many people as feasible.
They just may have a convention-center-sized pile of email to dig out of, first.
Personally, I'm taking this as a learning experience; next year, my housemate will have her badges shipped to the house and I'll have mine shipped to my office, so that we don't have multiple orders shipping to the same residential address and potentially tripping this issue. While no doubt the PAX/Reed Expo folks will have some takeaway data from this year about false positives in order to refine the anti-scalper measures next year, that's still an easy thing she and I can do to ensure there's one less potential case they have to review next time around.
I'm still waiting to hear back from them. Hopefully it'll be soon. I'm a bit calmer, but still on edge. Hope it gets sorted out before they decided to re-sell those tickets. By darn, I was on that ticket sale quicker than the flash cause I really wanted to go again this year with my friends.
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Their "orders over limit" condition is implemented incorrectly. I'm seeing stories of people ordering 2x2 even after being okay'd by PAX to order the next set because it was their fuck up in this mess too. It's also being pointed at address duplicates for a hard 100% ticket recall when that seems retarded.
Either the planning was done poorly or the implementation was done incorrectly, it takes both to produce a consumer program.
Because based on my own experience and commentary on Twitter, many people had only four tickets (i.e., within the limit) and got all of those cancelled (i.e., went to zero). And the list of people to cancel in that manner was almost certainly obtained in an automated manner, by a program going over ticket purchasing.
Determining "this is several separate people who have the same address buying tickets legitimately" (communal households like college students renting a house together, large families who want to go as a group, etc.) versus "this is a scalper buying a bunch of tickets they're shipping to themselves to resell" is an automation issue, if your intent is to winnow out and block the second one in an automated manner. And, I note, an extremely hard problem to solve through automation; as I said, computers can't read intent, and so the two scenarios likely look very similar. In both cases, you likely have more than one order shipping to the same address, but purchased under different names/cards.
As I said before, I think how they chose to act on those automated results was incorrect; they should've had a grace period and a chance to appeal, etc., rather than a warning, 30 minute pause, and cancellation. But people in the first category showing up erroneously in the second (and getting stuff cancelled), yes, that's an automation issue.
I think his point is that it's not difficult to automate a process that will flag transactions that are clearly suspect and refund those rather than a blanket rule that says 'You may buy no more than 4 passes of each type.'
PAX. PAX. PAX. Boom.
Ticket limit policys never have an intent factors to them. If you want to legitimately buy more then posted limits, a different name, address and credit card is always needed, always.
They really need to acknowledge that scalping cannot be prevented, and the emotional and financial pain caused by them today, is just as bad or worse than the financial pain caused by scalpers. We should not blame scalpers for today's automated cancellations. Lack of business sense and knowledge leads to poor processes and decision making. It comes with the territory, seeing how the expedited growth of PAX is a phenomenon (and a special one at that). Lack of experience with sudden success leads to these kinds of mistakes in all types of business & organizations.
Remember that PAX used to have the worse 3rd party shipper for tickets, and it took them years to acknowledge and improve. We are all thankful for that. Now, we can only hope they improve this over time, with the focus on helping true customers attend the event, rather than wasting resources fighting scalpers. Funny thing, right now I'm wishing there were more scalpers fighting for my business, so prices on ebay were lower.
My heart goes out to those that we 100% honest in their intent, as well as those who have it in writing from PAX support that there unique situation was OK in May, only to have them go back on their word unexpectedly today.
So far, showclix still shows the correct amount of passes for the two orders, and I've not received any cancellation email, but the extra set has already been claimed by coworkers and their friends.
Going to have to keep a very close eye on this one.
The problem is there's a lot of confusion; the message that went out said "you will be left with four tickets" and many people were left with zero. So even the cancellation message and the end result don't match, leading to a lot of frazzled people doing the kermit-arms thing.
Realistically, all we can do is wait for word back from the PAX Prime folks about what happens next. Whether that's "oh, man, our bad, we're so sorry, going to try to address this with X, Y, and Z" or "nothing we can do, tough luck, might want to hit up eBay", we won't know until they come out and say. But in the meantime, lots of us are probably theorycrafting as to how this happened as a bit of stress-relief. After all, we're gamers; we're often trained to look for patterns and mechanics in things as a way of trying to get past an obstacle.
(Now to see if there's anything useful in my inventory, or if I missed a key item a couple zones back and need to reload...)
As King_of_Dew said in the part I bolded, it's completely unacceptable that this has happened nearly 2 months after the badges went on sale. Almost assuredly every attendee that is traveling in has already made travel arrangements at this stage in the game, yet it was decided that now is the time to inform everyone about the problem?
I've had the luxury to have a desk job where I can purchase tickets and I've bought tickets for 8 people (myself included) for the past 4 years and haven't had a single problem until this year. Luckly for me I live in the area, but the 7 other people live on the east coast and have already made air travel plans and reserved AirBNB's.
I quickly responded to the cancellation email this morning to state my case and plead for something, I just hope that it's not in vain.
That was the worst part. I've rented out a place for 10 of us on AirBnB to stay together for $1400 and friends have spent a few hundred on train and plane tickets. Some of them waited a month out to see if anything about tickets getting canceled would come up. I responded 20 minutes after receiving the e-mail this morning and haven't heard anything back, but I'm seeing people get a flat "There's nothing we can do. Sorry." My fingers are still crossed.
Trade me pins, yo: https://www.pinnypals.com/pals/Lazorz
Emails were sent to folks that went above and beyond this. If you feel this is a mistake, you're more than welcome to contact pax_questions@paxsite.com.
edit: Also, as some of you have noted, there are actually different tiers of actions being taken against those that purchased more than the limit (three different tiers to be exact), depending on how egregious the violation was). And for those wondering, this impacted approximately 3% of all orders.
Yay! Good to know. Would it be possible to get further clarification on whether the four set limit is per person or per household? The impression many people seemed to have at ordering time was that two people at the same physical address could each order 4 full sets without issue. Indeed, the text quoted on the policies at time of order, and re-quoted in the cancellation mail this morning, was (bolding mine):
PLEASE NOTE: In order to keep things fair, we currently have badge limits of 4 per person (per badge type). If we determine that you are ordering under different names and multiple addresses, all of your orders will be cancelled immediately.
The first part seems to imply that there'd be no problem with two separate people at the same address buying four badges each. However, based on many of people's cancellation stories (including my own), it seems as if this is being interpreted as four per address, not four per person. If that's the case—if four per household is the limit—then so be it, and there's perhaps no point in trying to follow up further. But it'd be good to know, if so!
Either way, thank you for helping to shed a little light on whether or not the two-order thing was a factor in the cancellations.
I just registered to ask you about this.
I ordered 4 sets of tickets a total of 16 total for me and my three other friends. During the time when the tickets went on sale, my GF was at my house at the time. She ordered two sets of tickets for herself. She used her own billing and mailing address, her own name, and her own credit card. As per the policy I followed and she followed it. How come our tickets got canceled and refunded outright? Is it because it's under the same IP when we did the order (she was on her cellphone, while I was on the computer during the queue)? Anyways we don't live together and I'm the only one in my house that purchased tickets going to my address.
I talked to a fine gentleman named Shurad (forgive me if I spelt it wrong) at the number that's been going around on reddit to call. And he looked under my account and saw I only purchased a total of 4 sets (16 tickets). And he doesn't know why it got flagged. He also noted on my account about our phone call as well. I also sent an email with my entire PayPal transaction history to show I didn't order any other tickets and my purchase confirmation as well for a total of 4 sets.
We can also provide drivers license and any other form of identification to prove we are own individual (per person - show policy).
Am I out of luck despite following the policy and not ordering more than 4 sets myself, or can this be remedied; so me and my friends can still get our passes and go to the event?
Thanks.
I ordered two sets of three passes (2 for Friday, 2 for Saturday, 2 for Sunday). My order was cancelled. No one else lives in my house that ordered tickets. My credit card was not used for another order. There is nothing that should have caused my order to be cancelled. I have called and they told me to e-mail. I have e-mailed and have not received a response.
@packetdancer Functionally, your mailing address is one of the ways we link orders - the logic being that if you have roommates and all want to go, you should be able to cover that in a single order.
@hideoshikaze @schmeckle @alkalin43 Your badges were cancelled because of an entirely different reason, but I can assure you, it was not a mistake. You're more than welcome to email pax_questions@paxsite.com.
The fact you posted one after the other actually makes me think you might know each other.
I hope this all gets resolved soon but I am a little upset that some people who purchased over 4 sets tickets simply had their order reduced to 4 sets when my entire order was under 4 sets and was reduced to zero.
Ah. Our group of folks who attend together each year only has one or two people who can get to a computer and get the tickets (usually my housemate and I); we both work in tech, but other friends (who may be on call for customer service stuff, or out walking the floor on a nursing shift) cannot easily get to the computer during the sale window. As such, it's always been up to us to grab the tickets for the group, but for 7-8 people going each year, we've always been able to split the order between two people and cover everyone without issue.
At any rate, while I'm really disappointed our group's going to have to break with tradition this year, I suppose I can understand the policy. We'll try to make do by badge-passing and such so that everyone gets a little time in the expo.
That said, I would politely suggest that the phrasing of the policy might need to be amended for clarity's sake. Since it sounds that it really genuinely is a per-household limit of four sets of badges, it should be called out that way instead of phrasing it as "four passes per person" on the ordering page. We assumed with two people ordering, we'd be able to get the usual allotment of passes to cover our group without issue under that policy; if it had been clear it was per address this year, we'd have made sure to try to phone someone else in the usual crew to order instead.
Thank you for at least giving an honest answer about it, so we can start planning accordingly.
I have absolutely no idea who those other two are. I came over from reddit when someone posted that you responded to the thread.
Other than a mistake, what possible reason could they cancel my tickets for? I purchased them for me and my friends. The guy that looked into my account also said there were no notes in it and that I don't have a history of "scalping" nor have I even attempted to do such a thing. It's me and my friends that planned this trip out. We paid for airbnb and also flight costs as well.
I'm genuinely confused as to why they got canceled and how it wasn't a mistake.
I'm just throwing my hands up into the air hoping pax_questions will clarify at some point for me.
Out of curiosity though, why did it take so long for the cancellations to roll out? 2 years ago, when passes were canceled it only took a week maybe 2. This notification came almost 2 months later after people have already paid for housing and travel expenses.
If so, I don't see how we are supposed to be able to legitimately get tickets. We are a multi-family dwelling with several adults and kids, and we had two different people order tickets with their own visas for the lot of us. This is the same way we did it last year (although we couldn't get the full allotment last year due to sellouts, it was still two people, two cards, same billing address, and we paid scalpers for the other days
I understand no policy can be 100% effective, but I'm hoping you guys have the resources to look at these cases individually so I don't have to be the bearer of bad news. Can provide ID, can arrange to pick up day of event.. anything to show we are a large family, not scalpers.
/fingers crossed.
I fail to see how multiple people living at the same address can be reasonably expected to coordinate a non-refundable purchase that is only available for an hour at an unspecified time and date. Then, am I to understand that we're expected to hold on to any inadvertently purchased extra badges for a months long period of time without making arrangements to give extra badges to other attendees who would need to make purchase hotel and flight accommodations?
This seems extraordinarily burdensome Robert, especially considering cancelling such accommodations typically comes with a penalty, not to mention the fact that the stated rule was 4 per person, not 4 per household.
I like to have faith that the PAX folks will probably try to review and deal with as many of the appeals that have gone to pax_questions as they can; I'm sure their intent in this is to shut down scalpers and badge-hoarders rather than to ruin things for fans, especially those who've already bought plane tickets and hotel rooms. I'd expect it'll take days to sort through everything and clear up false positives, but I'm also reasonably certain they are trying to do that.
Actually I've already e-mail pax_questions@paxsite.com regarding my situation and I'm awaiting a response. I called as soon as I got the cancellation/refund confirmation. I hope we can get this resolved.
I don't mind them trying to do the good deed and shut down those people. Last year I spent $300 to get a 4 day pass to go to PAX. It truly sucks.
Heck I can even provide proof that these passes I got we're all accounted for, and they were in fact for my friends. We all live in Alaska and we have a group of 13 people going as a whole. Even have a Facebook group page to plan this all out. I just don't know why I got flagged other than me and my gf being on the same IP address during the purchase. She completed her order first. Then I completed mine after hers due to the bug, and I somehow managed to get it to get to 4 sets.
I'm really upset because this wasn't nice waking up to.
I just hope they can help me out.
Then I come to the forums and find this.
Am i the only one who does not care for somebody who already received a warning for going over the limit and still tried it again. Im sure this works great in real life. "I am sorry officer, i was only speeding because i did it before and the police officer who stopped me gave me a warning before and not a ticket. Dang the past three years on this school zone has gone to shit". I think ill try that line when i get pulled over next
That's understandable. Although a blanket statement like that is a little cut 'n' dry in this situation. I didn't really think about it and I myself only went through and bought the a full set of 4x4 on my own. This is the 3rd year they've done cancelations. The first year I understood that I couldn't buy more than 4 on my own. That's fine, I was alright with keeping 4 and I ended up going to ebay for the rest at a severe price hike for my mistake. This second year I couldn't even get through the queue and which resulted in me going through all my friends and going on ebay, unfortunately at another severe price hike.
This year the order went differently. I had friends/funds wanting to purchase tickets, but didn't have the funds. So for my group who I had planned to stay at an airbnb, our tickets were purchased at 3 different locations. 3 Different CCs, however they were under my name, and by 3 different people...
Previously, tickets were retracted very shortly after the initial sale, within 1-2 weeks.
The CC front also probably wasn't a good idea, but before the whole scalper situation they had group pricing and 3-day passes that my friends got me while I was in college and couldn't pay up front. Now that I make good money I wanted to do the same for my current friends. In any case, the system is put in place to prevent scalping. I'm just a fellow gamer wanting to hang out with my fellow gamers/nerds.
In the end, in my situation, their system to prevent scalping causes me to have to pay those scalpers who didn't get their tickets revoked.
In any case, I was pretty riled up at the whole situation. And it didn't help seeing all the cancelations for the 2x2 incident and those people that have families larger than 4 getting punished.
You can feel however you want about it, I'm just waiting on pax_questions@paxsite.com to make a decision.
I've calmed down now, I'll just have to see what they say and if worse comes to worse lose out on about $800 on prepaid travel fees.
I'll probably hear from them in the morning with good news or something. I'm not too worried because I know for a fact it has to have been a mistake on the system.
Trade me pins, yo: https://www.pinnypals.com/pals/Lazorz
And set up all your page monitors.
I did this year for the first run of tickets but It was pointless... The page still said soon even though the tweet came out... Screw RefreshMonkey... Im going old school...
...since the response is rather vague, I'm hoping it means there is a possibility to re-instate our order. I'll keep updating as I receive more information.
I suspect that'll be true of a lot of people in the thread. Feeling calmer now, I mean.
Honestly, being a little heated yesterday isn't surprising; it was a bit rough for everyone hit by this, I think. Waking up to find out PAX tickets had vanished was a bit of a shock, and those of us affected didn't have a lot of answers about why things had happened; we had guesses and theories, but no more. With vacation plans and meetups with friends on the line—and in many cases money already spent on tickets and hotel—it's not too surprising that tempers would run a little high and nerves would be frazzled!
But by today, the initial shock's past and there's a little more clarity for folks; Robert confirmed that 2x2 orders won't have tripped the system, we know folks are starting to hear back from pax_questions, and so on. Like I said before, I have faith that the PAX Prime and Reed Expo folks aren't trying to ruin things for legitimate attendees. What would be the point? So I suspect they'll genuinely consider appeals and try to fix things for as many people as feasible.
They just may have a convention-center-sized pile of email to dig out of, first.
Personally, I'm taking this as a learning experience; next year, my housemate will have her badges shipped to the house and I'll have mine shipped to my office, so that we don't have multiple orders shipping to the same residential address and potentially tripping this issue. While no doubt the PAX/Reed Expo folks will have some takeaway data from this year about false positives in order to refine the anti-scalper measures next year, that's still an easy thing she and I can do to ensure there's one less potential case they have to review next time around.
I'm still waiting to hear back from them. Hopefully it'll be soon. I'm a bit calmer, but still on edge. Hope it gets sorted out before they decided to re-sell those tickets. By darn, I was on that ticket sale quicker than the flash cause I really wanted to go again this year with my friends.