Jailbreaking the System - How I got Coldplay tickets without a phone
It's just bloody damn luck!
Continuing my adventures of an Apple Watch only life (read more on why here), I woke up this morning with no update on my phone’s delivery and no update on my SIM’s activation status. I was mostly expecting that I would have a lazy Sunday, eat something nice, maybe build some of my side projects but as soon as my partner woke up, she told me that we had to book Coldplay tickets at 12 pm on BookMyShow.
My BookMyShow account was not logged in, I couldn’t get OTPs and I couldn’t use any payment method that relied on phone number OTPs. And I was competing with millions of people who were diehard fans, had been planning for days (weeks?) and had researched the best ways to get their tickets. Difficulty level unlimited, challenge accepted!
Hurdle 1 - BookMyShow Login
The first hurdle was logging in to BookMyShow at 11:55 am, when the website was already showing signs of being very, very finicky. I realised I had already setup login with my email as well, so that part was easy. I used Sign in with Apple, and I was able to login immediately, without any reliance on an OTP
Hurdle 2 - Getting a good queue number
At 12:00 pm, a lot of us tried getting into the queue to no avail. The BookMyShow server started acting weird and there was no way to get into the system. Around 15 minutes later, when I finally managed to get in, my queue number was 300k+. I knew I wasn’t going to get it but we waited a full hour until we saw the last few tickets getting sold out.
We were dejected, but we accepted our fate and decided to move on with our Sunday.
Hurdle 3 - Getting a good queue number. Again?
At 1:30 pm, we saw a post from Coldplay on X saying that they were adding one more show with tickets opening at 2 pm. By then I had given up hope and told my partner that we had no chance of getting it. I instead spent my time talking to the Apple Store guys, looking for updates on my phone delivery.
My partner meanwhile setup 4 devices with different accounts logged in, mine included, and started preparing herself to get a good queue number again. At 2:01, she told me the numbers were all 300k+ again. The best number we had was our friend’s who was at 32k but that also seemed like a distant possibility.
Around 2:05, just for fun, I used my test phone to login to BookMyShow, using an account that my partner had already setup on another device and had a queue number of 300k+, and tried entering the queue.
To our wildest surprise, I got a queue number of 6k. Within minutes, the page refreshed and showed a queue number of 4k. A minute later, I was at a number around 720.
Two minutes later, I was in and I booked 4 tickets immediately.
Hurdle 4 - Payments
Amex has the best card payment experience in my SMS-free life because they send the OTP simultaneously to both my number and my email. HDFC (credit cards) does not send OTPs to email. Using my Amex, I was able to quickly make the payment and secure the tickets for my partner and her friends.
Lessons learnt
1. Server driven systems are unpredictable (duh!).
2. Your queue number is a function of luck, you could have setup 10 different devices and still failed or gotten into the queue and secured your ticket with just 1 device.
3. BookMyShow clearly lets the same account try from multiple devices and assigns a different queue number each time.
4. The definition of the word “Queue” needs some rethinking because hey, how the hell did I get a better queue number when I entered the queue much, much later than everyone else. What is a queue even at this point?
5. Lack of a cellular SIM cannot stop you from getting tickets 😂
So honestly, nothing much to learn here, if you got the tickets, thank your stars, because you were just lucky. If you didn’t get the tickets, that’s alright, there’s always another time!
Happy Sunday!