Monty Python Live ticket touting

tapyeno

I am sickened. Was sitting at my computer on Monday morning at 10 ready to try to buy 2 tickets for the 02. They were all gone in 44 seconds. Straight away afterwards they start appearing on sites such as 'Get Me In' and 'Seatwave' at vastly inflated prices. Four more dates for the event revealed and they also disappeared almost at once. I thought touting was supposed to be illegal!! Sites such as these, and others like them, should be banned as it encourages touts!!
What is more Ticketmaster, authorised seller of the tickets, advertised as soon as tickets at face value were all gone that they could be purchased from 'Get Me In' - a Ticketmaster Company - at market prices !!! Wonder where they got their tickets from???

mountainofdebt

tbh I wouldn't worry too much......have a feeling that alot of fans are going to be disappointed by the performance anyway

Lifeforms

Just as an FYI. 2 tickets were bought from Ticketmaster website around 10:45. They were not all sold in 44 seconds. 2 more tickets were bought at 11am via the phones (assistance line, as a wheelchair was needed, but they also were selling non-wheelchair/normal tickets on that line as well.) I was on hold for 50 mins before I got through to a human, the other person was on for 45 mins. It took well over 200 redials before I even got onto a hold queue. crashed my mobile after about 75 . Was trying on both the mobile and home phone, but gave up on mobile after I killed it. Essentially we had 4 different methods to try and pick up tickets.

Tickets were released by Ticketmaster in batches as more dates became available, and this can be seen by their twitter feed.

So yeah you will always fight touts, and those determined to buy to sell on for a profit, but there were tickets available till at least till 11am buyable through telephone lines, as well as the standard websites. In addition, the o2 arena site went down almost instantly, ticketmaster by far managed to stay up with the sheer volume of surfers. You needed to recheck and reload constantly as whilst it would say no tickets available, if you kept at it, it would come up with options eventually, and as above did at 10:45 allowing the person to buy them after trying since 10am itself.

The biggest poor show of the day, was the advertisement of 99 max price, "£300 cheaper than the Rolling Stones". Yet direct from O2 itself, the wheelchair seat by far exceeded the top price ticket. Guess they didn't include those "special seats" in the list of ticket prices to begin with.

Big_Nige

The simplest option is not to buy from Touts/websites, if you live near London, go on the night , wait till the show is due to start & buy then. As soon as the show starts a ticket depreciates fast. I bought a £50 ticket for Queen & Paul Rodgers for £20 by missing the first song. Don't let them win. If not buy the DVD.

Browntoa

Another 5 days go on sale 10am today as it goes

Watson

I'm ashamed to say that a combination of panic and ignorance on the first day of booking (at a time when it was expected that there would be only a single performance) led to me paying considerably over the odds for two tickets in the very farthest reaches of the arena. This was on the GetMeIn! website.

Later that same day, after I realised what I'd done, more shows were announced. I was able to book two considerably better seats at their proper value, this time through the official O2 site.

Someone pointed me to an eye-opening Despatches TV programme (on YouTube in four segments) about this "official" ticket-touting practice where sites which present themselves as fans selling to fans are actually given huge blocks of tickets by promoters which they then sell at enormous mark-ups the moment booking opens. I was disgusted to find out that GetMeIn! and other similar sites are all affiliated to the seemingly legitimate Ticketmaster agency.

I'm hoping that demand for what are now first night tickets will enable me to sell mine, though if I do it will be at the proper price. Even if I can sell them (and especially if I can't) it's been a very expensive lesson.

Lifeforms

The demand for re-sale is there. People want to buy tickets for all sorts of events, and people want to sell theirs too.

If someone is willing to pay prices that are well over the ticketed price, then so be it. It's their money to lose, for every demand someone will come in and fill the gap.

The issue beyond that is touts who buy up blocks of tickets, vast numbers with multiple credit cards etc. Just do max per uk address. That solves the problem instantly. 6/8 per address is more than enough to cover large family in terms of festivals, and music events. Institutions can pre-register for more tickets on the basis of it being named on tickets. ie schools for some events could pre-register and be allowed to buy 20-40-60 whatever they need, but not be allowed to resell any.

People will always buy to sell on. If you can make a profit on them, great! But it's not resale sites that are the issue, it's the companies who make their business to buy large numbers, and the ticket sites/event promoters who are willing to sell bulk seating because they're guaranteed the sales. The people who need to be persuaded to change are the event organisers and original point ticket sellers themselves.

tapyeno

More dates revealed yesterday and I managed to get 3 tickets at face value from AXS.:j

paddyrg

Secondary agencies are owned by the primary agencies - they know exactly what they're doing. And promoters are smart enough to take a slice of the secondary increased prices too. Frankly, the whole area of ticketing, booking fees, secondary fees, primary and secondary ticketing, etc is dirty and opaque - and long overdue for some kind of legislation to clean it up and make it consistent.

Watson

If anyone's interested in the problem, I do recommend that Despatches TV investigation I linked to above.

nickj_2

the problem obnly exists because there's a market for it and people are willing to pay thru the nose for tickets , until that stops nothing will change ,for most top acts the number of tickets available will be exceeded by the demand for them