MSE News: Fans overpay on ticket website, Channel 4 investigation claims

countingthepennies

Originally posted by mew
"Great example here.

One Direction Tickets went on sale (i belive) at 9am this morning. 9.06am this morning I get an email from Viagogo "Following their BRIT Awards win One Direction announce a UK arena tour. Don't miss your chance to see them live near you. Get your tickets here!"

Click through and the cheapest tckets are £46! (Most are between £80 - £100)"

Just to clarify how annoying this was on Saturday morning! My daughter and three other friends were on the ticket websites before 9am ready for One Direction tickets to go on sale. Predictably all the sites crashed. We checked Viagogo at about five past 9 and as mews said, One Direction tickets were available from them. They were also available almost immediately on ebay.

The programme just confirmed what I had always suspected. We have consistently had problems getting tickets online, and always wondered how they could sell out so quickly when no one could actually get through to the site to make a purchase. Perfect example of Rip Off Britain

chiefdave

This has been an issue for years and amazingly when it was looked into the report stated that there's a demand from consumers for there to be a secondary market, clearly if you could buy the tickets in the first place no one in their right mind would prefer to pay more on the secondary market.

It’s been obvious this has been going on. on some occasions where tours are advertised as being on sale at 9am but don't actually go on sale till later due to an error you will find hundred if not thousands of tickets on these sites before they've even been on sale!

There’s another problem as well. Although some of the tickets are handed over to these secondary sites they are also using teams of people to try and buy tickets in the public sale which places a huge load on the websites which then crash, if there were only genuine buyers trying to purchase would there be such regular problems in this area.

Simple solution a) make reselling at above face value illegal and b) make the face value inclusive of all booking, transaction, convenience and postage fees. If the likes of these sites and ebay couldn’t sell above face value they will not be a viable outlet for ticket sales. Touts outside the venue should be dealt with by police and venue staff (venues and promoters usually retain the rights over a ticket even after you’ve paid for it so they could be taken from any touts outside the venue and resold on the door).

This is such an easy problem to solve it’s clear that no one wants to solve it, you have to ask why unless they are benefiting.

haddock22

Its a shame that no band or artiste will come out and say they will sell tickets to their gigs in a different way ie direct from venue so fans arent ripped of with all these extra charges.Or perhaps they cant be bothered to engage in this way with the fans who make them in the first place!

1sthand

Surprised to see such responses here. I thought this is a site where all things 'moneysaving' is king?

I mean, concerts are entertainment. They are not essentials. Ticket sellers, resellers, touts can only sell tickets for what the buyers are willing to pay. It will only take a few concerts with really low demand for the prices to be revised.

If essentials are priced and manipulated this way, then it is a problem. Hmmm.. train tickets anyone? Houses maybe? :O
Concerts nope. If you think it is expensive, just don't buy. There is always a chance of picking it up at last minute .com maybe? LOL

dicky_dunock

Guns n Roses don't go on general sale till this friday yet viagogo and seatwave have tickets.


http://www.viagogo.co.uk/Concert-Tickets/Hard-Rock-Metal/Guns-N-Roses-Tickets/E-424458


http://www.seatwave.com/guns-n-roses-tickets/manchester-evening-news-arena-tickets/29-may-2012/perf/561045

Kite2010

Nice to see what the promoter is trying to shift for extra money/

katiesam

We watched the Dispatches documentary and were disgusted by what the undercover reporter found.

It took us literally hours online before we eventually managed to get tickets for the Take That tour last year from one of the primary sellers. It was the same story with the previous Take That tour.

And as usual, while we and thousands of fans like us, struggled to get just the few tickets we actually needed to see the show, within minutes of them going on sale, ebay and secondary reseller sites were teeming with them at highly-inflated prices.

To now find out that Viagogo got their own allocation to sell above face value is appalling. And it is equally wrong that they employ teams of people to complete against genuine fans when tickets go on sale on primary sites to buy even more tickets to tout to the same fans they've prevented from buying at face value.

Yes, fans are often desperate enough to pay a premium to see their favourite artists but if the so-called 'power sellers' and secondary resellers like Viagogo didn't buy up so many tickets in the first place, fans would have more of a chance to get the tickets at face value.

And the fact that they were binning so many tickets is scandalous - how many fans would have loved those tickets but didn't get lucky buying from primary sites and couldn't afford/refused to buy from Viagogo?

The sooner Sharon Hodgson's bill is passed, the better. For more info, here is her page: http://j.mp/Fans1st

I'm surprised that there isn't a petition on the epetitions site about this.

ALIBOBSY

1sthand wrote: »

Surprised to see such responses here. I thought this is a site where all things 'moneysaving' is king?

I mean, concerts are entertainment. They are not essentials. Ticket sellers, resellers, touts can only sell tickets for what the buyers are willing to pay. It will only take a few concerts with really low demand for the prices to be revised.

If essentials are priced and manipulated this way, then it is a problem. Hmmm.. train tickets anyone? Houses maybe? :O
Concerts nope. If you think it is expensive, just don't buy. There is always a chance of picking it up at last minute .com maybe? LOL

People keep posting this side of the argument, but DID you actually watch the program and have you read what people are complaining about. Its is not so much someone buying a ticket and reselling at a profit say on ebay or the like. This is promotors conspiring with these sites and brokers to give them tickets BEFORE they go on sale to the general public.

An analgous example based on what you said about essentials being manipulated would be say warburtons only produce 10000 loafs to be put out on sale at various supermarkets for £1 at 9 am the following day.
BUT they make a sneaky deal with say tesco who get 5000 loafs early and sell them at £2.
Some of the 5000 left are also bought up by tescos at £1 to resell and say just 2000 are available for memebers of the public to buy at £1 and all others end up at tesco on sale for £2 (plus warburtons get a massive 90% kick back on the initial 5000 loafs).
Effectively artificially increasing the price of loafs the majority buy. Finally normally all loafs would be sold at £1 but under the new system 500 get chucked in the bin so people who would have bought a loaf go without.

TBH the big issue is the collusion with the promotors to artificially hike the prices of tickets-bet the artists don't get a share of this either-what a con!

Ali x

CLIVE_WALDER

It’s high time ticket selling agencies were abolished. They’re parasites ansd nothing else; they levy charges for doing next to nothing and probably the majority of tickets are now sold through such agencies

Before computers were invented venues used to see tickets for their own events, they saw no need for ‘specialised’ ticket selling agencies. With the advance of technology such companies are even less necessary.
If venues accepted returns or refunds then sites like Viagogo wouldn’t be needed.
They’re a prime candidate for Room 101

hungryheart

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/18317

There is a small petition started online if anybody is interested