[rainbow_carnage]

I've bought tickets from Lastminute.com many times and have never had a problem until a couple weeks ago.

My friends and I got tickets to La Clique (great fun!). The site said best available tickets for a tenner. I figured that they weren't going to be the 'posh seats', but the top price floor seats. Seemed like a good deal.

When we got to the Hippodrome, the woman at the box office looked at our booking and put some yellow bands on our wrists. We had no idea what the colours meant, so we just went along with it. As it turned out, the yellow section is in the back of the circle.

I was a bit annoyed. The show was not sold out. Surely 'best available' means best available, and not the third price down.

In the end, it worked out fine. A nice usher sat us in a different section, and we had a perfect view. We didn't even ask him. He volunteered to upgrade us because there were better seats available.

So I'm not actually going to complain. I'm just curious. Did Lastminute.com falsely advertise these seats as best available? Or was it the box office, who knew that we hadn't paid full-price, so stuck us in the cheap section?

Has anyone else had a similar experience with Lastminute.com?

[meerkat]

I have stopped using them now. After you book with them they send you a feedback form- I have expressed my complaints in great detail and have heard nothing back. Their customer service is non existent in my experience.

[gazzaw13]

I have stopped using them now. After you book with them they send you a feedback form- I have expressed my complaints in great detail and have heard nothing back. Their customer service is non existent in my experience.

I agree. I managed to order excellent seats for Six Characters through lastminute.com and when I turned up at the theatre I had been moved to the end of Row A with no explanation.

[Haz]

Write to Watchdog.

[Red Momma]

I'm a bit concerned about these yellow bands as I have tickets reserved for Saturday with last minute.com.

Are they semi-permanent and do they have to be cut off, or will I have to go for a meal with them stuck around my wrists before I catch my train home?

Will I look as though I have some nasty identifyable desease

Should I carry scissors?

It all screams of those all inclusive holidays!!

[Jan Brock]

When we got to the Hippodrome, the woman at the box office looked at our booking and put some yellow bands on our wrists. We had no idea what the colours meant, so we just went along with it. As it turned out, the yellow section is in the back of the circle.

Oh, I like that idea, marking out the proles who are in the cheap seats so one can identify them in the foyer and barge in front of them in the drinks/toilets queue. Excellent. A yellow wristband doesn't seem an obvious enough marker though - how about having their ticket price stamped on their forehead ? That would also help people in the stalls see which interlopers had gatecrashed with a TKTS discount.

[Kathryn2]

'Best Available' seats can be awfully misleading - I booked for the March 28th matinee of Avenue Q
at the end of January, for a full-price best available seat, and was dissapointed to end up in the last row of the dress circle next to the wall. Fair enough, it was a clear view, but it can't possibly have been the best available seat at the time of booking - it was pretty packed (it would have been the last matinee) but there were a few empty seats in the middle of the circle - funnily enough in pairs, when I'd booked a single.
I'm sure that they slotted me in there because it was a single, rather than allocating me the best seat available when I booked.

When I did 'best available' seats for Les Mis I ended up almost on the end of the front row, which really
was a bit restricted - fortunately there were empty seats next to us, so we all moved along at the interval.

I must admit though, I've had good seats from them when the show has not been as busy - to get bad seats when it's no-where near sold-out is disgraceful.

[Understudy59]

On the Last Minute site there is a "Contact Us" section...the telephone number to ring is: 0871 222 5938

[Backdrifter]

Bear in mind that agencies have allocations. The ones you got might well have been the "best available" in what remained of lastminute's allocation of tickets. The gaps on the evening would be unsold from some other agencies' allocation.

[Kathryn2]

Bear in mind that agencies have allocations. The ones you got might well have been the "best available" in what remained of lastminute's allocation of tickets. The gaps on the evening would be unsold from some other agencies' allocation.

That's not what the fine print says - it always says that the theatre will allocate the best available tickets as they are sold, and that's why they can't specify seat numbers when you're buying them.

If they know they have an allocation of a certain section of seats they should be able to give you the seat number when you book.