Photo of last year’s tickets by m.klynstra.
By Steven T. Jones
Burning Man tickets went on sale today at 10 a.m. With thousands of people rushing to get the cheapest tier tickets ($210 this year), it’s always a frantic clusterfuck of long delays and technical glitches, but things started fairly smoothly this year…until they once again jumped the rails, leaving me and many others with the maddeningly ambiguous repeated message “Your order may have completed” after we offered up our credit card numbers.
For awhile there, it was cruising along, with Burning Man and InHouse Ticketing running a system that let you know where you were in line (I was number 4187 after logging on two minutes after 10) and automatically updating every 60 seconds. It was a nice change from some previous years when you needed to keep hitting the “refresh” button. Then that update bar went gray and everyone starting freaking out on message boards like Tribe and ePlaya.
I decided to run a couple windows at once just in case I’d lost my place and on two of them, I had 185 people in front of me for about 20 minutes. Then, suddenly, one let me in. I bought two tickets, it processed them, and then said, “Your order may have completed,” but saying I could try again. I did, this time buying two tickets on another credit card and the same thing happened.
The promised confirmation e-mail never arrived but I can’t afford a third charge, so I checked my online banking account and found I’d been charged for two tickets. So, now I have four, two, or zero tickets, but there’s no way to be sure. I’ve got calls out to people at both Burning Man and InHouse Tickets and I’ll post more information and updates as I get them.