'Don't feed the resellers': Come From Away sells out amid ticket mania in St. John's

Opera on the Avalon is issuing a warning to anyone looking to buy Come From Away tickets from an online reseller, saying most of the tickets are fake.

The demand for tickets for the Come From Away dates in St. John's caused some commotion at the Holy Heart Theatre, and apparent havoc for its website.

"Unfortunately it's not illegal in this province to resell tickets for any amount of money. Those tickets, most of them if not all, are all electronic tickets. I can sell an electronic ticket a thousand times to different people," said Cheryl Hickman chair of Opera on the Avalon.

"Our concern is that these people who want to see the show so desperately will now go online to Kijiji, or Craigslist, or Newfoundland Classifieds, buy this ticket … they'll show up at Holy Heart that night and the only people that will be able to sit in that seat will be the person who actually bought the ticket originally."

People lined up outside Holy Heart on Bonaventure Avenue starting at 5 a.m., and the online box office website crashed throughout the morning amid what it said was "extremely high demand."

However, Hickman said the website didn't crash at all, but tickets sold out within an hour for all eight days.

"Eight thousand seats and we had 150,000 visitors online," she said.

By 11 a.m., people standing in line had heard that tickets were sold out for all eight shows.

People on Twitter say they couldn't access the online portal, after Come From Away tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. NT.

Also by 11 a.m., people had taken to sites like Kijiji and N.L. Classifieds not only seeking to buy tickets, but also looking to sell tickets — for at least double the original prices.

By lunchtime Tuesday, tickets for all of the shows were officially sold out.

Later Tuesday afternoon, Opera on the Avalon, which worked with Mirvish Productions to bring the hit musical to St. John's, issued a warning on its Facebook page for people looking to buy tickets.

Holy Heart had listed tickets for sale at a price between $29 and $99 each. Some of the online classifieds list them for sale at $200 and $225 each, or by best offer, meaning people can respond and hope to outbid one another for a ticket.

"We are seeing a large occurrence of fraudulent tickets being resold for the benefit shows from Come From Away. People are selling these tickets from a variety of online sources — Kijiji, Craigslist and other sites that trade in resale tickets," read the post.

"MOST OF THESE TICKETS ARE FAKE! Many of these people buying these tickets will be out hundreds of dollars."

Opera on the Avalon said the reselling of the tickets for the benefit shows is "illegal because the contract of sale states these tickets cannot be resold."

"We encourage people, please, please, please do not buy from these resellers. Often they are taking advantage of good people." Hickman said. 

"The charities that are being helped from these shows aren't getting any of that money. Please don't buy from these people."

For people still in the online ticket queue, the Holy Heart website states, "Due to the extremely high demand for tickets, you are now on our queuing page. This does not reserve a ticket."

People in the online ticket queue also reported the wait time increasing as time passed, rather than decreasing the longer they were on the site.

But not everyone was lucky enough to get that far.

Some people trying to open the Holy Heart box office website were directed to a page stating the "account has been suspended."

The dates and times for the performances are:

• Wednesday, Jan. 23 at 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
• Thursday, Jan. 24 at 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
• Friday, Jan. 25 at 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday, Jan. 26 at 1:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
• Sunday, Jan. 27 at 1:30 p.m.

At least a few people were lucky enough to get tickets on the website.

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