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Others complained that while they were verified, they never received their code. Then there were the lucky ones — those who bragged that they were verified for both sales, something that the algorithm is not supposed to allow.

Sure enough, all 84 shows sold out while most fans never got past “standby.” And now, the only tickets left are for those who won’t blink at taking out a loan to afford the USD$10,000 per ticket price tag on the secondary market.

As a Springsteen fan myself, there was no way I was going to allow myself to be shut out. So I did what any desperate, devoted fan would do. I cheated, scalper-style. My best hope was to enlist an army of six friends who would be working on my behalf to get tickets to the limited Broadway run set to take place in the tiny 975-seat Walter Kerr Theatre. All of us anxiously clutched our phones on two separate Wednesday mornings, one week apart. I had one phone in each hand — mine and my mother’s — trying to will a text message to pop up on each one. Unsurprisingly, both screens stayed black. And why wouldn’t they?

It was only because of Verified Fan’s many flaws that one member of my ticket army was able to score Springsteen tickets. He probably can’t tell you the difference between “Born to Run” and “Born in the U.S.A.,” but according to Ticketmaster, he’s more of a fan than I am.

Yes, I bent the rules. But had I not enlisted help, my golden ticket never would have arrived.

Ticketmaster will tell you Verified Fan is a wide success, but the only thing they’ve succeeded at is excluding fans from even having the chance to see the most in-demand artists. There is still no foolproof plan to give fans an equal shot at tickets without also alienating a majority of them – and there may never be.

However, Ticketmaster could do me one favour in the meantime: bring back the waves of bots. I’d rather take my chances with them.