Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Tue Dec 02, 2014 6:16 pm  

Keep voting Tory and rip off Britain will continue. As for UKIPers any policy that is not racist would be interesting, but as they are a one trick pony I ain't waiting in anticipation.

Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Tue Dec 02, 2014 6:21 pm  

I still shake my head and wonder how the hell we ever got to a position where people were ready, willing and able to pay £41 each (and more) to watch a comedian.

My father was a huge supporter of the CIU and in his role as amateur singer and comedian went out of his way most weekends to watch the country's top comedians perform in a club somewhere in this, and other cities - if he ever had to pay a cover charge on the door then he'd walk away stating that his £5 a year CIU card covered all of that mullarky, he NEVER paid a cover charge, he would have apoplexy having to pay a £41 (and the rest) cover charge to watch a comedian.

Mind, none of the comedians he ever saw were millionaires, most were full time professional though.

Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Tue Dec 02, 2014 7:12 pm  

JerryChicken wrote:

Mind, none of the comedians he ever saw were millionaires, most were full time professional though.

To be fair, although many may be millionaires, describing them as comedians would probably breach trades descriptions

Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Wed Dec 03, 2014 2:03 am  

King Street Cat wrote: Wouldn't be hard considering the majority of buying and selling is done online. Could a resale limit be set that only allows resale at retail price plus reasonable seller expenses? Absolutely not, with the single exception of stuff where there is some sort of public interest justification (public order at designated football games, alcohol minimum pricing, and suchlike) the government can't and won't interfere with a free market. It is entirely up to the vendors to self-regulate and could quite easily (but at significant cost) do, but never will. They also mostly have contractual terms that tickets can't be resold but for the most part have zero interest in the bother of enforcing this. There was the famous instance of Viagogo and the RFU but I don't think it came to much and certainly had no impact on the vast secondary market for RU tickets

King Street Cat wrote: Wouldn't be hard considering the majority of buying and selling is done online. Could a resale limit be set that only allows resale at retail price plus reasonable seller expenses? Absolutely not, with the single exception of stuff where there is some sort of public interest justification (public order at designated football games, alcohol minimum pricing, and suchlike) the government can't and won't interfere with a free market. It is entirely up to the vendors to self-regulate and could quite easily (but at significant cost) do, but never will. They also mostly have contractual terms that tickets can't be resold but for the most part have zero interest in the bother of enforcing this. There was the famous instance of Viagogo and the RFU but I don't think it came to much and certainly had no impact on the vast secondary market for RU tickets

Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Thu Dec 25, 2014 11:50 am  

When I was in the first year of University in Salford, the Spice Girls decided to pop up again to make a few extra quid.

We thought, 'Great! That'll make US a few quid too' .. We queued overnight (around 15 hours), got on morning TV and all sorts and I bought 7 tickets. That was the maximum allowed, each at around £75 for front row floor tickets. I kept two, so I could take my sister for her Birthday and sold the remaining 5, well above face value. I made close to a grand.

I can't actually see a problem with a bit of ticket touting if you put the work in. After that, I did it for a few other big artists like Jay Z and 50 Cent and never had any agro from people buying them off me near the venue. Surely if someone really wants to go to a gig, they'll pay for it?

I understand it's frustrating on the phone lines, but the alternative is to go to the venue early and just wait..

(edit)

Obviously, nowadays I'd take a day off work and do it, but I would make sure it would be financially viable for me to do so..

[Durham Giant]

Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Thu Dec 25, 2014 12:17 pm  

Richie wrote:

Well Ticketmaster are good at selling tickets, so I'd expect them to try to have some business selling consumer-consumer as well as business-consumer. If it wasn't Ticketmaster it would be someone else running a facilitation website. Would that be OK?

But surely the fact that Ticketmaster run both companies means that when Ticketmaster get the tickets they may sell half to the public and then half to Getmein or to staff who work for one or the other companies.

The opportunity for fraud seems quite high to me.

I have tried getting tickets for various things over the last couple of years and have given up trying to buy online

Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Thu Dec 25, 2014 12:21 pm  

Heartwarming tales of greed at Christmas ....
Oooh, evoking fuzzy warm feelings of joy and hope.
Are you turning in your grave Charles Dickens?

Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Thu Dec 25, 2014 10:45 pm  

piemandan wrote:

When I was in the first year of University in Salford, the Spice Girls decided to pop up again to make a few extra quid.

We thought, 'Great! That'll make US a few quid too' .. We queued overnight (around 15 hours), got on morning TV and all sorts and I bought 7 tickets. That was the maximum allowed, each at around £75 for front row floor tickets. I kept two, so I could take my sister for her Birthday and sold the remaining 5, well above face value. I made close to a grand.

I can't actually see a problem with a bit of ticket touting if you put the work in. After that, I did it for a few other big artists like Jay Z and 50 Cent and never had any agro from people buying them off me near the venue. Surely if someone really wants to go to a gig, they'll pay for it?

I understand it's frustrating on the phone lines, but the alternative is to go to the venue early and just wait..

(edit)

Obviously, nowadays I'd take a day off work and do it, but I would make sure it would be financially viable for me to do so..

Ah great. Well done you.

Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Fri Dec 26, 2014 11:31 am  

This forum does make me laugh;

Someone complains they can't get tickets to a gig. Helpful dose of reality ensues from some people, others balk and whine.

A related event is shared and the comments get mardy. Precious time wasted from the off.

That's the way it goes!

Re: Event ticket industry needs investigating and regulating : Fri Dec 26, 2014 1:54 pm  

It's not an event I'm going to lose much sleep over missing. If however I'd worked my rocks off to get tickets for a favourite band and lost out to the touts I'd be turning up to the venue and kicking some heads in! Although it's unlikely to happen with the amount of pre-sale and priority schemes I've signed up for to avoid the disappointment of losing out to fly by night touts.