The timer is/was the worst, I once decided not to buy tickets for an event because the timer wasn't giving me enough time to fill out my CC info and I didn't want to bother rushing or filling out some kind of user profile w/saved card to fit their awful UX.
Re:Ticketmaster is a horrible company
by patmcguire on Tuesday January 03, 2017 @11:09PM
(#13315612)
Timer is not sketchy if it's long enough, but four minutes is probably too short. You need locking for the reasons you said, and if you didn't have an expiration you'd have fun denial of service either accidentally from users deciding not to purchase, or purposely for the sheer malicious joy or from resellers who would scalp a ticket for a higher price, then use their lock to buy the actual product.
Fifteen minutes seems more appropriate, though.
If a user took longer than the 4 minutes or so there would have had to be more users on the system wanting the same type of seats and none available. This really didn't every happen except for insanely popular events, like NYE or some very popular singer, etc. If after 4 minutes, your time was up. You were taken back to search again, but we said "your last seats are still available. Check out now?".
I cannot say now-a-days, if the timer has more importance and I cannot say from a Ticketmaster standpoint technically. What I can say is how we used to do it.
Edit: added the "Honestly" part, first paragraph.