Wimbledon 2011 Letter URGENT HELP!

oldone_2

kkhimji2001 wrote: »

no seat number was on the ticket but on the form it asks for the specific ticket number, should i ignore this form completely and send a letter then?

You are obviously very worried and frightened by this, but it has already been said, this is not a criminal matter but a civil one.

If you ignore the letter, you will almost certainly get more. You should also ignore these and only pay attention in the extremely unlikely event that you get a court summons, in which case we can all help with your defence; but it will not come to that.

I would go further, and say that if you ignore the corespondence, and you keep getting more letters, there will come a stage where this becomes harrassment and the solicitors should be reported to the Law Society.

kkhimji2001

I also got an email with the same information as the letter, the email has a contact at the firm so rather than send a letter I can easily reply to this instantly to the person who sent me thi..

visidigi

ok here's what I would do, reply to them and advise you were given them by someone at the club who unexpectedly couldn't go.

At the last minute you couldn't go.

You do not have the tickets anymore, as after realising they couldn't be sold on ebay you didn't complete the sale.

You don't have a note of the ticket number - as this isn't something I would have really thought of.

....thats about it. Be vague, but not so vague that they don't give up chasing.

agrinnall

kkhimji2001 wrote: »

I also got an email with the same information as the letter, the email has a contact at the firm so rather than send a letter I can easily reply to this instantly to the person who sent me thi..

What you should do is what many people have said already - NOTHING. Keep the letters and emails that the solicitors send you but do not reply to them in any way. The only point at which you need to do anything is if court action is initiated, and as has already been pointed out there has been no loss therefore there's no claim to be made against you and it is extremely unlikely that any action will ever be taken. If it is then come back here but really, it's not going to happen.

visidigi

yes, the user can get away with the silent treatment.

BUT

Wimbledon will just then go after the club and 00's or 000's of members access to the event could be affected.

Depends on your conscience I guess...

NeilF3485

visidigi wrote: »

yes, the user can get away with the silent treatment.

BUT

Wimbledon will just then go after the club and 00's or 000's of members access to the event could be affected.

Depends on your conscience I guess...

This is just speculation though really isn't it. None of us knows what course of action the All England Club will actually take over it. Save to say that they are extremely unlikely to actually initiate court proceedings because they simply have not incurred any losses (as Fluffnutter and others have said).

Good to see that the AEC are spending their vast wealth wisely on harassing people about tickets that they have already received the money for, instead of investing in the game in order to maybe one day have a British Wimbledon champion, which would probably generate a hell of an increase in demand!

For what it's worth, I wouldn't suggest the OP ignores the letters either, as this is clearly stressful and worrying for the OP. I would respond with the earlier suggestion of "I'm not giving you any of the information you've asked for unless you can demonstrate my legal obligation to do so" (or something like that).

unholyangel

fluffnutter wrote: »

I don't believe it's a crime to advertise Wimbledon tickets. It might be breach of contract, but that's not criminal, it's a civil matter.

If you've committed a crime, why haven't you got the police knocking at your door?

I've actually had to deal with this on a online site where i volunteer as staff. I'll try explain it as best i can. But it is a very sketchy area and both sides can be argued equally imo.

The tickets are property of wimbledon, they give permission to certain companies to sell those tickets. When they sell the tickets, they are technically acting as a broker and entering both parties into a contract for services/payment. No problem there.

When that person then resells them, they are effectively entering the new "buyer" and wimbledon into a contract. A definite problem there as they have no "legal" right to enter wimbledon into that contract and by selling at a profit, they are effectively acting in the "course of a business" and not merely mitigating losses.

If wimbledon knew which seats had been "touted" and really wanted to throw a spanner in the works, they could then refuse to honour those tickets on the basis that no contract was agreed by them or their broker with the "buyer". The spanner being that the reseller would then be open to small claims court for the cost of the tickets plus possible expenses (of travelling/hotels). They could also report those people to HMRC for undeclared earnings/income.

They likely arent doing that at present as lawyer fee's & staff costs would mean too much money for them. However there is a possibility of them taking this approach if they were setting out to make an example of people - unlikely though imo.

I would agree with fluff that there is no legal requirement for you to provide the information they have requested (and i do presume it is requested and not demanded). For all they know you changed your mind after the buyer fell through and gifted them to a friend.

visidigi

NeilF3485 wrote: »

This is just speculation though really isn't it. None of us knows what course of action the All England Club will actually take over it. Save to say that they are extremely unlikely to actually initiate court proceedings because they simply have not incurred any losses (as Fluffnutter and others have said).

How familair are you with the process of allocation of wimbledon tickets?

Having been through the process and havign been through all the requirements quite afew times its actually really refreshing to have a firm control over event tickets such as these - the touts don't get away with it because winbledon actually do something about it.

Hence these letters.

They arent necessarily going to sue you for selling, but they want to ensure that tickets given to clubs are ending up in the hands of players from that club.

For me, i would share enough information to get by, not any more than you need to, but enough to satisfy them so the chasing stops.

NeilF3485

visidigi wrote: »

How familair are you with the process of allocation of wimbledon tickets?

Having been through the process and havign been through all the requirements quite afew times its actually really refreshing to have a firm control over event tickets such as these - the touts don't get away with it because winbledon actually do something about it.

Hence these letters.

They arent necessarily going to sue you for selling, but they want to ensure that tickets given to clubs are ending up in the hands of players from that club.

For me, i would share enough information to get by, not any more than you need to, but enough to satisfy them so the chasing stops.

I don't care about the allocation of tickets. My comment was that can anybody say with any certainty that you KNOW what AEC will do NOW? Do you know for a fact they will issue court proceedings etc. to enable the OP to make an informed decision on how to proceed. You know, something concrete to help the OP rather than speculation.

I agree that limiting the market for touts is a good thing, wasting time and money harassing individuals is clearly not good.

visidigi

Im not, at any point saying I know what the AEC will do to the OP, but I DO know that the clubs are targetted after the individual.

Seen it happen in three tennis clubs in four years. The issue here is that because the distribution of the tickets is not to the individual initially, but to the club they go after the individual first, then or also the club itself.

At the end of the day they arent harrasing an individual, they are asking for info on the basis that they sold a ticket (by whatever means) when the ticket itself implicitly states it should not and cannot be resold. At the point its resold (through any means) the OP is liable - but to what extent is based on the amount of information shared by the OP or obtained by the AEC.