Hundreds of J. Cole fans vented their anger at Ticketmaster on the company's Facebook page after being unable to buy tickets for his upcoming concert.
The hip-hop artist will perform in Auckland in December. Tickets went on sale at midday today.
Hundreds of fans, who were online ready to snap them up, say they tickets sold out at midday. They said they were directed to the Ticketmaster Resale site, where they were available at five to 10 times the price.
One was advertised for more than $1000. The tickets were meant to be about $120.
Many vented their frustration on Ticketmaster's Facebook page.
One person commented: "Ticketmaster we hate you. Was waiting since 11.45am, went onto the tickets right on the dot and it says that nothing matches my search for any of the tickets. Doesn't make sense. And the re-sales are $653 each for GA."
Ticketmaster said it was a different entity to Ticketmaster Resale, therefore it was not, as some accused, encouraging scalpers by supplying its own re-sale page.
Hannah Ireland was one who persevered. She got two tickets after hours of trying. She joined Jim to talk about the ticket chaos.
"By 12pm it said there that were no tickets available and it instantly came up with the resale site.
"After about an hour and a half of refreshing the page, I finally got to get two tickets that were allocated seating," she said.
Ms Ireland had an exchange with Ticketmaster on its Facebook page.
"I left a comment ... I said that this is totally unfair. The people who genuinely want to attend cannot - and if they do they have to buy over-priced tickets on the resale site."
It did not show the website as being overloaded. She could not get through on the 0800 phone number, she said.
She wrote: "You need to make the ticket limit smaller than 10 per person. Scalpers are reselling them for more than $300-$800 this is completely unfair."
Ticketmaster replied that the promoter asked for a 10-ticket purchase limit, not them.
A Ticketmaster spokesperson told RNZ the demand for J. Cole tickets was "huge".
"Unfortunately there are always going to [be] some disappointed fans who can't get hold of these highly sought-after tickets.
"We never place tickets on secondary market sites.
"Ticketing marketplaces are dynamic and prices change in line with demand.
"With high profile events such as J.Cole, tickets are sometimes listed at prices higher than the face value. Tickets very rarely sell at these elevated prices though, with many selling at face value or below the original price."
