Of the assorted F words I know and love, free might very well be my favorite – and when it comes to free concert tickets, well just sign me up yesterday already.  Just the other day as I was browsing the interwebs, I noticed assorted articles linking to a 2003 lawsuit against TicketMaster, which – unless you’ve been hiding under a rock – you know as one of the largest and most successful event production and ticketing companies in the North America.  The lawsuit, known now as Schlesinger vs. Ticketmaster, cites TM for neglecting to share every last iota of information on the UPS and Order Processing Fees applied to their purchase  on orders made between October ’99 and February of ’13.  Which makes a whole lot of sense given that every time I see a “convenience” fee I have to comment on how “inconvenient” it actually is.

The verdict requires them to pay out almost $400 Million to loyal fans, audiophiles, music lovers, comedy croonies and more. To check if you’re one of the lucky contestant on ‘The Ticket Prices Are Finally Right‘ – log in to your TicketMaster account from the desktop version of the website, click through to ‘Your Account’ and scroll down to the bottom left where you’ll see a link for ‘Active Vouchers’ -and voila!  If you’ve been a loyal customer like I have, you should have a gaggle of ticket vouchers for not just one but two tickets for upcoming shows by LiveNation that expire in the far off land of the year 2020, assorted $2.25 discount codes to take the edge of off any online ticket purchases and $5 discounts for UPS delivery.  Needless to say, I got all sorts of excited when I found out the news and after checking the site I found out that I had 7 pairs of show tickets and 5 discount codes.

After  I scoured and searched TM high and low for some redeemable experiences, I realized that as with most good things in life there’s a few caveats. It seems like the TicketMaster Team is well aware of what’s hot and what’s not, (in)conveniently leaving large metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, New York City and  San Francisco out of the running for discounted concerts.  Sure, those concerts are more likely to sell out on their own – but maybe maybe a repository of 50 tickets that we can buy? Because let’s face it, we moved to these locations so we didn’t have to flock to Mountain View, Irvine and Chula Vista.  Not to mention, that initial batch of free tickets to bands I cared about over a decade ago like Blind 182, Darius Rucker (HOOTIE!) and Goo Goo Dolls have been eaten up by loyal fans.

According to TM, as of Wednesday 6/23 almost $5 million worth of ticket vouchers – so they’ve agreed to release another $5 million more.  Here’s to hoping they book something a bit closer to home…at least sometime before 2020.

Did you find any shows you couldn’t live without? How many pairs of tickets did you receive?  Curious kittens want to know – leave a comment below!