DO NOT PANIC BUY, READ EVERY LITTLE THING BEFORE BUYING.
I’m just venting about my experience with buying concert tickets in japan, especially with this latest case of using Lawson E-ticket
I’ve been to a few concert in japan, now usually, they are a bit of a pain with the lottery system and the inflexible rules, but it usually always turned out alright. However, this time with the Yoasobi Arena tour, everything went to shit.
Every single ticket went out from lottery literally 3 months before the first concert, so by the time I even found out, it was already all gone. But then they opened the general sales literally 3 days before the concert, with 0 information prior that this was going to happen. I panic buy as I was leaving japan Soo (only have a visa for 1 year) but they needed a credit card and phone number (both Japanese.) Fair enough, it’s standard and annoying so I ask my Japanese friend to do it for me, thinking that after she can just send it over to me. LO AND BEHOLD THE CESSPOOL OF BULLSHIT.
We realized after that the e ticket is not a QR code like all the other ticket or a printable version at the Loppi, but it’s only available at the O ticket app, which is only usable from the phone with the sim card that ordered the ticket. And since my phone isn’t a sims free phone (also thank you Japan), I am screwed. We thought we can try screenshots but nah, the q&a say it’s forbidden. Okay fine, I’ll use her phone at the concert, but Nope again, Lawson autofilled the name when she filled in the credit card user name and it’s not my name and they check for id.
So we have 0 ways of tranferring the ticket, so fuck it, we screwed up, let’s just get a refund. BUT THEN WE SEE ON THE Q&A THE TICKETS ARE NON REFUNDABLE. Usually website have big warning and would tell you it’s non refundable before ordering, here it was a small line in a wave of stuff (to be fair here, partially on us, should have read it more thoroughly, but man have that stuff in big red warning before please).
(Edit: it was in red that it was non refundable, that’s on me. It was not clear that the tickets were non transferable, and we can’t buy for others tho)
So now I’m out 7000yen and I’m very f#$king angry
Basically, don’t do what I did. It’s easy to panic buy BC getting tickets are hard. But the process is very hard
8 comments
Nothing you’ve said is that new or remarkable.
All the shows I’ve been to in the last year (including smaller club shows) have been via apps like Pia/ローチケ where you have to present an electronic ticket via the app and the staff verify it by swiping the screen.
However nobody checks ID at the door. It would be a huge hassle to check thousands of people at an arena show.
Also, there is almost always an option to resell the tickets via the same company.
e-plus changed to a similar system for some tickets as well in recent years. I had to be extremely careful buying tickets to a show for a friend who was visiting and she ended up having to essentially order a sim to my place (and a phone, but she didn’t have to) for me to register an account for her just so that she could be my +1 as stated in the rules, and at the show we had to show ID plus the ticket through the app for them to be valid. Those kinds of tickets are sometimes transferrable in that you can sell them on the partnered ticket resale site for face value but they usually say if that’s an option.
The downside is that although it helps curb people reselling for high prices, if you’re not already in Japan or panic buy without checking like you experienced it really limits your options. It’s always good to have alerts on for the artists you like on the ticket website or newsletters from their official site so you get an email about upcoming shows, it’s super annoying because they send a ton but at least you miss out less. You also usually have the option to pay at the convenience store in cash before a certain date and sometimes that saves you a lot of trouble too.
I sympathize with you, I just went through a similar ordeal with Bjork tickets.
I forgot I had applied to the lotto back in like September, and I thought I had lost (because that’s what the first part of the email said), but then like a week before the show I got notice that I still hadn’t printed my tickets.
Turns out I had lost my first two choices but won my third. I now had other plans so I tried to cancel. Nope. Tried to get a refund. Also not allowed for some reason. (You’d think they would have no problem giving refunds for sold out shows…). Selling is such a nightmare here because of the names on the tickets, the genders of the names, the printing or apps.
It’s insane. I support measures to prevent resellers but Japan basically threw the baby out with the bathwater. Simple changes to the law would go a long way towards not making a concert purchase be the most irreversible decision of your life.
Like, doesn’t the law already say you can’t resell for above face value? Why isn’t that good enough to deter scalpers?
Or require that tickets sold have to be refundable. The system here is so convoluted. The Bjork ones didn’t even allow resell on the sellers website.
I feel your pain, and understand how annoying the whole thing is. But everything you mentioned is pretty standard in my (limited) experience buying concert tickets. I hope it was a good lesson and that you’ll tell your friends, so hopefully someone else is spared making the same mistakes. Bummer about the tickets!
By the way, if you want to find out about concert tickets more in advance, make sure you’re either in the official fan clubs or following the (of course, Japanese) social media accounts for the band/group/whatever. That’s usually where they’re posting the information, and probably why the general public and/or English speaking residents don’t find out about concerts until last minute
Yeh we also had this problem before where we entered both lottery in Pia and Lawson thinking we could just not buy the other one if we one both(first time buying). We one both but since Pia was the closer one we wanted to cancel the Lawson Ticket but couldn’t. Sold it to a friend of a friend who wanted to go but was not able to win the lottery. Went to the venue and after a lot of back and forth and have to pretend we were related we were lucky the guy there agreed to transfer the ticket. Never buying from lawson ticket again.
Btw have you checked if you can resell the ticket? They sometimes have official reselling through their site.
The O ticket app is best avoided – use one of the other ticket services unless you are absolutely sure you are going
while there are a lot of terrible things about ticketing in Japan, nothing is quite as scummy and predatory as ticketmaster, so I’ll live with it.
I think you can give it a try and go to the concert using your friend’s phone or account. Sometimes they say they’ll do ID checks but it might just be a random one so why not try your luck?
BTW my friends and I found out with friends visiting from overseas that, with the Cloak app recently that the owner of the account just had to get their phone number validated upon registering, but you can use the app on a completely different phone and it’ll still work. And you can use the same number for multiple accounts.