Phishy Sale

About 1,900 Phish fans, who scored passes to the band’s upcoming four-night stand at the Denver-area Red Rocks Amphitheatre a week before the official onsale, got a rude awakening when their orders were canceled by Ticketmaster hours later.

After an error was triggered in the Ticketmaster Entertainment Web site March 18, four-day passes were snapped up by Phish fans. They then posted the ticket news on Phish message boards. Single-day tickets reportedly never went on sale.

Some Phish fanatics thought the early sale may have been the band’s idea.

“We initially thought this was the band’s way of giving something back to the fans, their way of dodging the scalpers,” one fan, who purchased two four-day passes, told the Denver Post.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

In an e-mail to customers impacted by the sale, Dave Butler, TME president of North America, wrote “the sale of these tickets prior to the scheduled onsale date was the result of an inadvertent error on the part of Ticketmaster. … Per our stated policy and our practice Ticketmaster refunds purchases in such situations and cancels the tickets.”

Despite the cancellations, the company did provide the Phish fans with one carrot.

To make up for the error, TME will issue $50 gift certificates to the customers who placed early orders for the Red Rocks shows.