If Ticketmaster's fees weren't painful enough, their online captchas are out of control. The other day, I tried to buy some tickets on their site. Part of the way through their purchase pipeline, I encountered this captcha:

GHU??Y

I tried something, and it was wrong. So next I got this captcha:

I thought BEMGOAG or BEMGDAG. I'm not sure which one I tried, but it was wrong. Was I going blind? Did I need a new prescription?

One more appeared on screen:

Finally, one I could handle. I raised my arms and channeled my inner Johnny Drama, "Victory!"

Then the next screen informed me that the concert had sold out.

Ticketmaster has to be one of the least customer-friendly companies out there, but perhaps the problem is that they're not seeking to deal with human beings. I think their captchas are designed not to weed out robots but humans.

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