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08/04/2009 02:35 PM

NY1 For You: McCartney Concertgoer Forced To Play Musical Chairs

By: Susan Jhun

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When concert plans were announced for Paul McCartney at Citi Field, one Manhattan fan who rushed for tickets did not get the stage-side view he thought he had paid for. NY1's Susan Jhun filed the following NY1 For You report.

As soon as tickets became available for Paul McCartney's third and final concert at Citi Field, Roger Scholl of Manhattan went online to buy two tickets for himself and his wife.

"We decided to spend some bucks. They weren't cheap. And we opted for like the second price range, which was about $190 a ticket, but a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," says Scholl.

That once-in-a-lifetime opportunity came with a once-in-a-blue-moon setback.

"I went to show my wife where the seating chart was and logged back on to the website and noticed that the section that we had bought our seats in had been shifted off to the side," says Scholl.

Scholl purchased tickets in the B6 section of Citi Field, which was originally right next to one of the center sections in front of the stage. After the transaction, however, things changed.

"What they did was they took where B6 was supposed to be where the seats were that we had bought, and on the new seating chart there was a section called B5-1 that had physically taken the location where B6 had originally been," says Scholl.

When he called the Mets to complain, he was first told that his seats had been moved and AEG Live, the concert promoter, was responsible.

Unable to reach someone at AEG Live who could help him, Scholl called the Mets again and this time was told that his seats hadn't been moved, but the new seating chart was just misleading and not to scale.

Scholl enjoyed the concert, but photos he took in Citi Field show that section B5-1 was directly behind section A6, as opposed to the B6 section as advertised in the original seating chart.

"They literally took a section and said 'Yeah, when we sold you the ticket we told you it was here on the seating chart, and now it's here,'" says Scholl.

NY1 called the Mets and AEG Live to get an explanation.

The Mets said in a released statement: "The seating plans for the Paul McCartney shows underwent some late adjustments due to changes in the staging and production that affected a small number of seats. The Mets worked diligently with concert promoters and Paul McCartney's management to relocate customers whose views in their estimation were compromised. The section in reference underwent a slight adjustment because of the reconfiguration, and the sightlines remained consistent with similarly-priced sections."

A spokesman for AEG Live gave NY1 the same explanation for the change in seating plans but told the station that out of fairness to Scholl the company would work with him to come to some sort of resolution.

NY1 will continue to follow this story.

If you'd like "NY1 For You" to look into a problem, call our 24-hour helpline at 212-379-3599 or send an email to ny1foryou@ny1.com.