http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-44195496 I for one am completely in support of Ed Sheeran (and others) who are tackling ticket tout websites. Last year I ordered a pair of tickets to see Sarah Millican in Leeds in April and I (foolishly) paid £208 for the pair thinking that the ticket price would have been somewhere in the region of £75-80 each. Which is still a lot of money but it was part of SWMBO's Christmas present, and I expect a ticketing company to make some profit. Anyway when the tickets arrived, for some inexplicable reason I decided to look at the face value of the tickets, which I'd never bothered to do before, and they were priced at £27.50 each!!! So Viagogo (robbing bastards) had charged me £153 over the odds for two tickets worth £55. I wrote to Sarah Millican, who did reply and said that though she sympathised with my (and others) predicament dealing with sharks like Viagogo there wasn't anything that she could do other than suggest that tickets are bought from the venues themselves. I also wrote to Viagogo and tweeted my disgust at such blatant profiteering and surprise, surprise I didn't get any response other than from other people that had been anally violated like I had! Also as me and SWMBO are in tune with each other she had also bought me tickets to see Sarah Millican, but in Huddersfield, and she paid the face value plus £5 admin costs. So I put "my purchase" up for sale and managed to recover £120 of my outlay. But it shouldn't be like that. Lesson definitely learned! I hope that the action being taken by entertainers like Ed Sheeran mean that all these ticketing sites disappear up their own arseholes! Cnuts!
Some already put your name/ID number on the ticket and only allow resale through their own official site for the original price + some admin fee. I like that idea.
My wife is currently buying tickets to The Moulin Rouge for our upcoming Paris trip this anniversary. Thought she was being done by a ticket tout so I asked her to go direct to their site. Turns out that no, it really will cost us £350 to see it. She’s currently selling it to me on the basis I’ll actually be allowed to sit and eat dinner and perv at scantily clad dancers. I could probably get a hooker for less and go the whole way if I were that way inclined. Ticket touts are a serious issue though. When tickets are being purchased within seconds of going on sale, then being sold on other sites within the hour at inflated rates, it really does need tackling.
Went to a gig last night at Half Moon. 2 Floyd members, Gary Kemp and a Blockhead. Had to have photo ID or we weren’t getting in.
Ah I remember the good old days of going to the theatre box office and getting tickets for some great gigs. Life was so much nicer before technology made it so easy for companies to steamroller the man in the street.
An interesting tactic by Sheeran's production company to invalidate tickets bought by touts and secondary ticketing agents which I fully applaud. Viagogo seems to be becoming isolated as the ticketing industry appears to be trying to put its house in order volunterily before legislation consigns them to history. Viagogo apparantly reside in Switzerland so good luck with suing them fu**ers. Andy
Generally speaking, in the UK goods and services can be bought and sold by anybody at any price, which might be higher or lower than the price other similar goods and services have been sold for. Resale price maintenance was abolished over 50 years ago. This is the way "free markets" work. I would be interested to hear why some people apparently think concert tickets should be a unique exception to the normal practice, and should have their prices fixed. Or would they prefer resale price maintenance to be re-introduced more widely?
Incidentally, I am intrigued by the word "touts". What does it mean? Someone who buys something at a certain price, and then sells it on at a higher price thereby making a profit. So that includes everybody in business doesn't it?
Companies employing underhand means to buy tickets en masse (usually a computer, able to buy tickets faster than normal). This is usually against the original seller’s policy that caps a maximum amount of tickets. This means a high percentage are purchased before any genuine buyer can. I understand free market, yet this is more market manipulation.
I expect them to make a profit. I said so in my original post. What I do not accept is that they rip people off by not telling people what the face value of the ticket starts off at. If they had said that a £27.50 ticket would actually cost me £104 then I can decide to take up their offer or leave it. I naively assumed the actual face value would be IRO of £75-80 given the final price asked for. The fact that they don't publish the face value suggests they blatantly want to mislead people.
Not sure how it works as I've never used it, but I've seen adverts for O2 mobile users saying they get priority ticket sales for the O2 arena and quite a few other venues nationwide, 48 hours before general sales?
Everything is relative. An insurer is happy to make 1% margin on 10b revenue, where a pound shop makes 90% margin on some goods (thousands of % mark up). Personally, I think you should only be able to but thru the venue. And limit maximum of 4 tickets. Any group booking need different validation, like you do for employee discount schemes etc.
Recent example. Tour being exclusively sold by Ticketmaster. Logged in early and in line to buy two tickets. All going well then kicked out and diverted to Getmein (owned by Ticketmaster). Getmein reselling tickets at very inflated prices concurrent with Ticketmaster. Later in the day Ticketmaster announce an additional day and another batch of tickets similarly intercepted by the Getmein touts. If you'd like an example of touting then it's the relationship between Ticketmaster, Getmein and the use of sophisticated tools that have developed priority access to Ticketmaster sales when they open. These are the cyber touts that make the profits and probably no earnings declared. Requests to Ticketmaster for information about this go unanswered.
As said above, ticket master are terrible for their concerts selling out immediately upon ticket release, but offer resale tickets straight away on their "partner" sites. I've been to a fair few concerts lately, and I find the best way to guarantee face value tickets is to sign up to the band's fan club, and you can normally get tickets 24hrs before general sale. Recently done this for foo fighters in Manchester next month. Also, this time ive noticed my name printed on the tickets, with a warning they are only to be used by me, not for resale, and to fetch I.d.
