Troubleshooting and FAQ

The questions that actually come up, in the order they come up. Every monitor's own page carries a live activity feed and a plain-English status line; start there, then find the symptom below.

"It says Running but I have had no cards"

Look at the four counters on the monitor card before assuming anything is broken.

Polls climbing, finds 0

Working perfectly. There are no tickets. This is the normal state of a monitor and it can be the state for days.

Polls stuck at 0

It has not read anything yet. Either it is still getting a session (give it a minute; on a football club's site that means signing in, which takes a little longer) or every exit is being refused — see blocked exits. A club monitor that stops here with a message about sign-ins is a different problem: see the sign-in messages.

Blocks climbing fast

The site is refusing the reads. Proxies, again.

Finds climbing but nothing in Discord

The webhook. Go to Settings → Webhooks and press Send test card; if that arrives in a different channel from the one you are watching, that is your answer.

Nothing found versus sold out

These look identical from the outside and are completely different problems.

• Sold out / nothing on sale. The site answered us properly and its answer was an empty list. Polls go up, blocks do not, and the activity feed says Nothing on sale right now. Nothing to fix. On Ticketmaster the event's own page state is often suppressed in this case — see what suppressed means. On a football club's site the same reading is normal between releases, and can be the state for days.
• Blocked. The site refused to answer at all. Blocks go up, the activity feed says Blocked, and the monitor drops that exit and gets a new session elsewhere. This costs credits each time, which is the other way to spot it: a monitor that is burning credits fast and finding nothing is being blocked, not watching a sold-out event.
• Hidden from your sign-ins (football clubs only). The club accepted the sign-in and then showed it nothing for this fixture. The monitor stops and says so rather than paying to be turned away again — see the sign-in messages.

Blocked exits

A ticketing site decides, per address, whether to answer. Some of your proxy exits will be refused; that is normal and the monitor handles it by dropping that exit and using another. It becomes a problem when most of them are refused.

What helps, roughly in order:

1. More distinct networks, not more lines. A list of thousands of lines that all sit in one or two networks behaves exactly like one proxy and gets blocked like one. Judge a list by how many separate networks it covers.
2. The right country. UK sites, GB exits. On a rotating gateway the country field must be the ISO code GB; UK is not a country code and is answered with a proxy error.
3. Residential or ISP rather than datacentre. Datacentre addresses are the cheapest and the most blocked.
4. Give it time. Block rates tend to rise under sustained volume, even with no change at your end, and in our testing a different provider usually degraded the same way. A run that starts well and decays is usually this, not a broken setting.

What does not help: retrying the same refused exit immediately. That is why a monitor that exits with "the site refused the monitor" is not restarted automatically.

How often it checks, and why not faster

Each site has a floor, and the new-monitor page will not go under it. It is not us being stingy with CPU: it is the rate at which the site starts refusing a session, and a refused session finds nothing at all.

Ticketmaster UK: three seconds per event.

• A cleared session is a limited resource. Reading through it faster does not make tickets appear sooner; it makes the site retire the session sooner. In our testing, at twenty reads a minute, a session usually lasts about 20 minutes, and occasionally only a few.
• Every retired session costs a credit and about seven seconds of blindness while the monitor gets a new one. We have not yet tested whether a slower interval makes sessions last longer.
• Real availability does not appear for one second. Between a listing appearing and it being gone there is usually a window of tens of seconds, and three-second polling is inside it.

Football clubs on eticketing.co.uk: about 12 seconds per sign-in.

• A club allows each signed-in account about five requests a minute before it starts turning them away, and every check is one request per market. So one sign-in checking one market every 12 seconds is right at the limit.
• That is why watching both markets needs two sign-ins, one per market, and why the way to check more often is more sign-ins, not a shorter interval: two sign-ins on one market is a check every six seconds between them. The club figures in full.

On either site you can set a longer interval, and it is a reasonable thing to do on a quiet event you are watching for weeks: fewer reads. On a club site it also spends fewer credits; on Ticketmaster UK we don't know yet whether it does, because sessions usually last about 20 minutes at the default interval and we have not tested longer ones.

New sessions and what they cost

A new session is the monitor passing the site's check again after the previous session was refused or retired. On Ticketmaster UK that is the anti-bot check; on a football club's site it is a sign-in logging in again. Each one costs:

• credits — one on Ticketmaster UK and on most clubs, three on the clubs whose sign-in passes a second check, and
• some seconds during which that reader is not reading: about seven on Ticketmaster UK, a little longer for a club sign-in.

On the monitor card, Session is the age of the current session. Watch it for a minute: rising steadily to several minutes and resetting is healthy; resetting every few seconds means the exits are being refused at first use and you are paying credits each time. Fix the proxies before buying more credits.

What the status messages mean

Paused — no credits

Your Firm balance is zero. Top up and it restarts by itself; the slot was never given up.

Paused — billing

The subscription is not active. Open Settings → Billing. Everything is kept exactly as it is until it is sorted out.

Your captcha key or proxy settings were rejected

The monitor found a setting missing or refused and stopped rather than hammer the site with something that cannot work. Verify the key on the captcha keys page; check the proxy username, password and port.

The site refused the monitor

A block or a sign-in wall. Not retried automatically, on purpose. Change exits, then start it again.

The club refused these sign-ins at login

The club isn't showing this fixture to your sign-ins

Football clubs only. Both are explained under the sign-in messages below.

The event link could not be used

The URL is not something we can watch: not an event page, a site we do not watch, or a club we have not switched on. Delete the monitor and paste the event link again from the site's address bar.

The monitor crashed

A bug or something transient. It restarts by itself with a longer gap each time. If it never settles, send us the monitor id and we will look into it.

A problem at our end

The monitor could not be started for a reason that is ours to fix, not yours. It has been logged. Press Start again in a minute; if it keeps happening, send us the monitor id.

The club sign-in messages

Only a football club monitor shows these. It reads through sign-ins you supply, and three different things can go wrong with them. The monitor tells them apart, because the fix is different each time.

The club refused these sign-ins at login

None of the sign-ins in the set could log in. Either the password is wrong, or the account is not a full ticketing account with the club — one that can already see and buy tickets on the club's eticketing.co.uk site — but only a login to the club's website or app. Fix the set in Settings → Club sign-ins (pasting an address again replaces its password), then press Start. Which accounts work.

The club isn't showing this fixture to your sign-ins

The sign-ins logged in fine, and the club showed them nothing for this particular fixture. Some clubs decide that per match. The monitor stops rather than paying to be turned away again. Try another fixture, or different sign-ins; your slot is kept. More on this.

A sign-in stopped working

One account was refused by the club itself and set aside; the monitor carried on with the rest. Paste it again with the right password to bring it back. A slow or blocked read never sets one aside.

Every sign-in has stopped working

The set is empty of working accounts, so the monitor stopped rather than read nothing. Add fresh sign-ins and start it again.

Proxy errors

407 on everything

Wrong username or password — or the provider authorises by IP address and has not been told about our servers.

Timeouts on everything

Wrong port. Providers usually give an HTTP port and a SOCKS port; we want HTTP.

A proxy 400 mentioning the country

The country field wants an ISO code. GB, not UK.

It worked yesterday

Rotating plans retire exits. If most lines are healthy and a few are not, the list is fine and those exits are gone.

Discord problems

"Invalid Webhook Token" on a test

The URL was truncated when copied, or the webhook has been deleted in Discord. Copy it again with the Copy Webhook URL button.

The test worked but nothing arrives

You are watching a different channel from the one the webhook belongs to.

Duplicate-looking cards

One card per new find; the same listing is not re-posted on the next poll. A second card for a block you have seen means the quantity, price or seat numbers changed, which is usually a partial release.

Too many cards

Narrow the monitor: a specific quantity, one market rather than all, or a maximum price. Or give that event its own channel and mute it.

Account and billing

The verification email has not arrived

Check spam, then ask for a new one on the send a new link page. It comes from thefirmalerts.com.

I paid but the app still asks me to choose a plan

The return page waits for Stripe's confirmation and forwards you automatically, usually within a few seconds. If it has been minutes, reload — the payment is safe either way, and the subscription follows the webhook, not the browser.

Everything stopped at once

Almost always billing: a failed renewal pauses every monitor at the end of the paid period. Settings → Billing will say so.

Still stuck

Send us the monitor id (it is in the address bar on the monitor page), roughly when it happened, and what the status line said. The logs are kept for a few days and are redacted, so we can read them without ever seeing your webhook token, proxy password or captcha key.

Something here wrong or missing? Tell us, and we will fix the page rather than just answer the message.