No show for concert in Buffalo July 25, 2009 - How disappointing - I thought I was going for priceless when I made the anxious decision to use our savings to purchase these expensive tickets to a once in a lifetime concert. After getting past the fact that I spent alot of money for our family of 3 to go see Billy Joel & Elton John, it turned to excitement waiting for the big day to arrive. I worked extra hard at work this week, and used a vacation day to make the 250 mile drive to Buffalo. It seemed it was going to be a great day. We left in plenty of time so we could get to the HSBC arena early and see exactly where we were going (this was our 1st time going to any event here). Once we felt comfortable that we would be able to get back to the arena in rush hour traffic on a Friday, we went to find a good place for dinner before going back to the arena. This is when things started to go bad - we pulled into one of the parking areas and the girl who was collecting parking fees noticed that we had PA license plates and said "I hope you are not here for the concert, because it has been cancelled". What a horrible feeling - I was instantly sick to my stomach, but we walked down to the arena anyway to try and get answers to our questions. Unfortunately, it was true, the concert was cancelled. What was really frustrating was that this was not announced until 3:00 pm and the concert was to start at 7:30, so no notice to the folks that were driving any distance. Lots of people invested time & money to go to this event (driving time, gas to get there, hotel rooms etc.) & then all you get is "Sorry, there will not be a concert tonight". This also caused some issues for the arena since there was really no notice - they had workers coming in that had to be called & enough food prepared for a sell-out crowd. I realize that things happen sometimes, but if there was even a chance that Billy Joel was not going to be able to perform, it should have at least been announced sooner.
I have been a Billy Joel/Elton John fan for 30 years,and it took a long time before I had this opportunity to finally live my dream to see them , but how quickly it turned into a nightmare! On top of this, I am finding out that since the concert was not cancelled, it was postponed instead, there is no refund on the tickets. If I cannot make it on the new date, then I can either try to sell my tickets or I am out everything. Not the news I wanted to hear since. I showed up to the scheduled event, but Billy Joel did not, and I'm the one who stands to lose the money that I paid for the tickets (along with the time & money already invested to get to a concert that didn't happen). This is just a very frustrating situation.