Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Missed chance...

Last March 12, I logged in to ticketmaster.co.uk (at 10am UK time) to try and get myself a ticket to the Graf-Agassi-Henman-Clijsters exhibition in Wimbledon on May 17. I had trouble launching the page - the first few minutes I was trying to access it, I kept seeing a message saying that the event didn't exist. I knew it must've been a glitch so I kept on trying.

After several minutes, the page finally appeared. I reckon there must have been some delay in making tickets available. So I try to get a ticket and I manage to snag a really good one at that, it was in the section right next to the court. I was thinking whether I should book it when I noticed that it would cost me an extra £18.50 for ticket delivery since I wasn't based in the UK. The additional cost threw me off for a minute, and since I preferred a seat at the back of the court rather than the side (that way, I wouldn't have to keep turning my head left and right during points), I decided to let the ticket go. In any case, I figured that since I was able to get a courtside seat quickly enough, then it should be easy enough to get another one if I wanted to.

Moments after I let it go, I realize that the extra £18.50 wasn't too bad (it's a full tank of gas and a good lunch) so I try getting another ticket.

And as I tried getting another ticket, I realized that all my assumptions were way off base.

I spent the next half hour trying to get another ticket but couldn't. When I finally get one, it was at the worst possible section - the topmost corner. It didn't seem worth it for me to pay almost PHP5,000 for a bad seat where the players would look like ants to me. So I decided not to get the ticket, and essentially drop my plans of heading to London in May. Which means I missed my chance of watching Steffi Graf play live on Wimbledon. Sucks!!

Moral of the story: don't be greedy and want a better seat than you already have (especially when the one you have is a pretty damn good one!). And when you are talking about once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, don't scrimp. You can always earn back the money but you won't get back the missed chance. Oh well...

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