Blizzcon Sold Out - Angry Fans Post

Was there a better way for Blizzard to have sold their tickets than through their crashy and clumsy webstore? Thirty-five pages of angry Blizzard customers* would like to know. Now scalpers are selling tickets on websites like Stub Hub for $1500 while fans claim they got only errors and tickets ripped from their shopping carts. "The availability of one or more products in your cart have changed while you were shopping. Your cart is empty," has been repeatedly posted by fans who expected the tickets to still be in their carts at checkout. One writes*:

"I've worked in retail for over 20 years and this entire thing has been enough to give me an aneurysm. I put in my security code no less than 30 times in the last 48 hours, I have screenshots at different stages of progress. How can you have a store where someone puts something in a basket and you make them fill out umpteen fields, and when they're done you say "oops we sold it to someone else" I'd love to watch that in a Walmart or a Sears..."

On a side note, it's always interesting to me how the scalpers manage to get through and buy tickets when customers can't. Some customers claim to have gotten charged though they got no tickets*, and some got charged for (and got) extra tickets*. To add insult to injury, Blue posts, "DIRECTV will be broadcasting BlizzCon,"* as if that's some kind of solution. But it seems no one wants to take the bait of paying for Direct TV just to watch other nerds have fun (unless they're masochistic).

I've debated about posting this on my blog. I want my blog to be positive. But, just like The Sims 2 Store distaster, I don't think pretending there's a not a major problem with the way something was done will make the problem fix itself. I'd also thought about trying to make (the difficult and expensive) plans to go to Blizzcon, but I think instead I'll just buy the bear on eBay. ;)

* (WARNING: the Blizzard forum contains bad language and descriptions of what angry customers would like to do to Blizzard. Please be aware when following the link.)