OT: Third Party Ticket Resellers [eg. Viagogo]

[CowboyNQ]

Hi Forumites,

 

Today I discovered a third party ticket reseller (Viagogo) were offering tickets to one of my band's shows at a $125 premium to the face value. To make matters worse, when clicking on their website, I was urged to "hurry, only 48 tickets left". Absolute garbage.

 

The show is not even close to being sold out, in fact it's only just gone on sale in the last 48 hours and is months away. I do not play keyboards for Adele or Katy Perry!

 

This seems like an unconscionable business practice to me.

 

Action I took today:

 

1. Did a heap of internet research and discovered that this company is often complained about down here for overcharging or selling fraudulent tickets

2. Also learned that the Australian Consumer And Competition Commission (Fed Govt regulator) is launching some kind of legal action against them for past breaches

3. Officially complained to the State Government Department of Fair Trading

4. Emailed the company and asked them to desist from selling tickets to our show, as we have entered into no arrangement with them, nor do we wish to.

5. Chatted to our promoter and agent about it, who basically told me the whole industry here is up in arms about it, but are a bit hamstrung at the moment - they've been complaining to relevant government bodies too.

 

The reason I bring this here is I'm curious to know if:

 

a) any of you guys or gals have encountered this type of thing,

b) if so, what you did about it and

c) do you feel there's something else I could be doing?

 

EDIT: I should have added that we also went to our Facebook followers and told them to only buy tickets via our website, or the venue's.

 

Thanks very much.

 

[Markay]

The NSW Dept of Fair Trading has called Viagogo out on their ticket reselling practises see HERE

 

Note Viagogo is based in Colorado, US, and will not respond to our local Authorities requests for information. Why should they when there are global suckers everywhere?

 

viagogo.com.au is registered to TPP Wholesale, Sydney, good luck to any dissatisfied Aussie customer trying to find an Aussie address to get their money back from.

 

From the NSW Dept of Fair Trading Website:

 

"This is simply not good enough, when consumers buy a product they rightly expect to get what they pay for.

 

Im putting consumers first and thats why Im issuing an urgent public warning about Viagogos unfair and unsatisfactory business services and practices.

 

Sosume.

 

[Threadslayer]

"... when consumers buy a product they rightly expect to get what they pay for."

 

 

Sosume.

I heard on the radio this morning that front row seats for Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour are available at $10K a pop.

[Dr88s]

There is lost to be said about ticket resellers and sites, but probably much of it off topic to your post.

 

I don't think there is anything illegal or even horribly unethical about buying tickets lawfully and trying to resell at a premium. It sucks for the unsuspecting person who comes across their site first and doesn't realize that tickets can lawfully be had much cheaper. I personally wouldn't sleep well at night if that's how I made my living, but to each their own....

 

On this side of the pond, and especially in Canada, the problem runs much deeper. A very small number of scalpers have somehow figured out the electronic ticket sales system, and snap up the vast majority of public tickets within seconds of them going on sale with specialized computers and software. It is often impossible to get box office tickets to popular acts here, even if you are sitting at your computer the moment they go on sale.

 

Those tickets and up on the reseller sites within minutes, often at 2-3 times face value. I understand that the resellers aren't the ones snapping up the tickets, but they are certainly profiting from an unfair practice.

 

I would love to boycott all reseller sites for this reason, but sometimes it is the only way to get to see a particular band or sports team.

 

It's never happened to me as a musician though; I only wish my bands were popular enough to be scalper worthy

[CowboyNQ]

The NSW Dept of Fair Trading has called Viagogo out on their ticket reselling practises see HERE

Thanks Mark.

 

Yes, when I chatted to NSW Fair Trading today they told me that Viagogo had accrued a mountain of complaints again this month. I think my little complaint will be something of a drop in the ocean. I actually asked them was it even worth filing a complaint, but they encouraged me to.

 

Not sure if it will do any good - but I will feel awful if our audience members get ripped off on ticket sales, so I'm trying to do everything I can.

 

I feel awful enough now just thinking about it.

[CowboyNQ]

I don't think there is anything illegal or even unethical about buying tickets lawfully and trying to resell at a premium.

Yes, but this is the thing. They haven't bought any of our tickets. So they're taking zero financial risk. I'd be very pleased if they bought every seat at our show and then got stiffed with the ones they couldn't sell after we alerted our customers! But that's not how this works.

 

As far as I can tell - their website interacts with the sales website and secures the tickets after they've been ordered by the unsuspecting customer. As I mentioned above, they falsely create urgency in the mind of the customer by saying "there's only 48 tickets left," or "less than 2% of tickets left" or "8 sections are already sold out". All of this is completely untrue.

 

They circumvent the vendor's website by taking out a Google Ad which sits at the top of the search results and contains words like "official" to make themselves sound like a preferred intermediary for this transaction.

 

To my way of thinking, they are offering an unnecessary service at an unrealistic premium based on a false premise.

 

 

 

 

[Markay]

Paul, as you say in your post the venue would not be sold out at this stage, so Viagogo are purely trading in futures on your gig. For those who do not know what I mean by "futures" if anyone is naive enough to buy a ticket from Viagogo for your gig then Viagogo will then buy a ticket and resell it at a significant profit. Otherwise they are available at normal price from the venue or its official reseller.

 

Don't stress, you have done good in alerting NSW Fair Trading who will pass it on to the ACCC to get this type of predatory behaviour banned eventually, with the support of artists and punters.

 

Venues who support live music are scarce in Australia and closing by the day, driving punters away with predatory pricing is the last thing we need.

 

Maybe worthwhile forwarding to Wendy Harmer on 702 here who knows gigging inside out as a stand up comedienne, and would be sympathetic to publicly outing of this sort of exploitation.

[CowboyNQ]

Good thoughts Mark and I appreciate your supportive comments. I'll run your suggestion by our promoters/management team.

[Dr88s]

As far as I can tell - their website interacts with the sales website and secures the tickets after they've been ordered by the unsuspecting customer. As I mentioned above, they falsely create urgency in the mind of the customer by saying "there's only 48 tickets left," or "less than 2% of tickets left" or "8 sections are already sold out". All of this is completely untrue.

 

I hadn't realized this is the MO.

Yes, definitely unethical and wrong.

I have come across many ad-promoted sites like that at the top of the Google search list; I have the knowledge and common sense to see it for what it is, but alas many others I know don't. I guess that's what keeps these people in business.

[OB Dave]

Viagogo are purely trading in futures on your gig.

To say that Viagogo is purely trading in futures assumes they're taking on some risk. They're not. If a person buys a ticket from a reseller like Viagogo, there's no guarantee Viagogo will actually come through with the ticket. Can you imagine paying a premium for a "guaranteed" ticket, making travel and hotel arrangements etc, arriving at the venue will call window only to find out oops, sorry, we weren't actually able to secure your ticket after all. Read the fine print. Here's your money back, have a nice day. It was all over the news here after the Super Bowl.

[Joe Muscara]

I wish I had gigs where some reseller could sell tickets for those kinds of prices.

[xKnuckles]

I had a bad experience with Viagogo a few years back. It was an attempt to purchase tickets to see Fleetwood Mac at the 02 arena in London. Their website is done in such a way that it gives the illusion that you are buying from a genuine, creditable source. For some reason, it was very hard to reach the genuine agencies...the search kept pointing to viagogo.

 

So, tickets were ordered through them. When the confirmation came and I saw where they had come from, I was a bit worried. Especially when a bit of research revealed the number of complaints etc about them on the internet. But, once you have sent them money, it is almost impossible to make contact with them. It truly requires herculean efforts to get any response. Phone number not answered etc. In short, cancelling seemed impossible. We were worried, but hoped that maybe it would be ok. There was the odd good review to be found among all the complaints.....

 

Eventually (only a couple of weeks before the concert) tickets arrived. I say tickets, because they were actually a PHOTOCOPY of some tickets. Not actual tickets. Alarm bells rang at this point. Looking through the o2 terms and conditions, it clearly stated that photocopies would not be accepted.

 

All attempts to contact them by telephone were impossible. So we sent an email in which we explained our worries about the photocopy and the o2 rules (how unbelievable that they had had the cheek to send us such a thing in the first place!) We demanded a full refund.

 

They did reply to this email. They sent a letter stating that they had reason to believe that the tickets we recieved might be fraudulant (....duh!....) and all we had to do was turn up on the night and meet with their representative who would swap our fraudulent viagogo tickets for genuine viagogo tickets......

Simple eh. In an ARENA holding maybe 20,000 or more people, he would be easy to spot in a cafe - among the dozens of cafes....and we would just swap our fakes which they had sent us for the doubtless pristine, quality seats which he would be pleased to replace them with....

 

They made the mistake of including a working telephone mumber with this letter. (I wonder if someone got sacked for doing that?) We were actually able to contact them and tell them that there was no way that we were going to travel all the way to London on the off chance that, having successfully sold us dud tickets, they had experienced a Road to Damascus moment and were feeling the need to rectify the error......

 

Their response was predictable. No refunds. No matter what. Not even for having been sold fraudulent photocopies. If we weren't prepared to make the effort to seek out a viagogo shaped person somewhere among the 20,000 concert goers then clearly we deserved to be ripped off. I was sure that I would NEVER want to come across one of them in person.

 

But fortunately we still had their letter in which they had admitted that the tickets were fraudulent. So we sent it to our lovely credit card company. And they refunded the entire amount. Sadly we had to miss the concert, but we learnt a valuable lesson about taking the most enormous care when buying tickets. Now I make sure that I ONLY ever purchase from the actual venue (which is what we thought we were doing on that occasion - that is how misleading the website was!) Viagogo? VileNoNo!

[gino]

They are dodgy as. It was on talk back radio and on the news last year after quite a few people got ripped off. It seems like its almost impossible to stop. You might start off at the legit ticketing website then as your going through the process of buying tickets you end up at dodgy website, its almost seamless. It's happening for any ticketed events, sports, concerts, etc. Best to just keep warning people about the scam as much as you can.

Cheers

[CowboyNQ]

Thanks all for your thoughts, suggestions and experiences. I really do appreciate it. I was very upset about this yesterday. I wouldn't say I'm less cranky about it today (Viagogo have added another one of our shows to their list since I started this thread.) but at least I don't feel so alone in my impotent rage now!

 

Anne - that story is just yuck. I appreciate you taking the time to share. You're right, their website looks very legit. I could easily see one of our customers being duped.

[Michael W]

I have worked in the ticketing industry for my entire professional career, which is more than 30 years. 18 of those years were spent at Ticketmaster in the US, most recently as an executive vice president responsible for the company's largest business unit.

 

I could write an essay in response to this post, but will try to respond with some main points later today when I'm off work. It's right in my wheelhouse.

 

 

[CowboyNQ]

That would be very much appreciated.

[CowboyNQ]

Resurfacing this thread for two reasons:

 

1. Viagogo are still up to their old tricks. They're currently selling tickets to one of our shows - which hopefully goes ahead next year under whatever COVID restrictions are in place - for AUD253 (normal face value AUD75). Disgusting!

 

2. They recently were fined AUD7mil by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission. Safe link to the story here.

 

I really hope that slows them down a little. But I'm not optimistic.