I just need to vent about this issue. I am sure we have all seen this super common practice, and we are also all aware of the issues of the companies themselves having systems in place that allow software to connect and buy tickets directly. I tried for the past 2 days to get a standing ticket (well 3 but would have taken 1) for the Slayer farewell tour in Manchester. Wednesday was o2 presale, yesterday was members presale and today was general. Well I am not on o2 so I couldn't get one on Wednesday. I tried yesterday but I was busy at work and missed the 9am start of sale so I had no luck. And today I also had no luck getting a single ticket for standing besides being on the website 20 mins early refreshing the page every 10 secs from 8:59 until the buy button showed up. I am fairly sure by the time the "searching for your tickets" option came up It had been all of 30 secs since the sale went live. And there are already 0 standing tickets. But this is new: right below the "sorry no available tickets" is a listing for tickets available via Get Me In which is ticket masters own site for people to sell tickets themselves. Yesterday there were 25 standing tickets on GMI for a minimum markup of £35 today i check and theres over 110 on there for a minimum markup of £30 but the numbers are mental. Yesterday there were 5 different listings for standing tickets 4 listings each for upto 6 tickets and 1 listing for just the 1 (assuming the 1 is an o2 presale or similar who can only get 1 per customer). Today when checking most of the listings are for upto 10 standing tickets and the markup is even higher. This practice needs controlling and stopping, As long as its possible for tickets to be resold so easily touts and people wanting to profit will continue to do so. I know some onus lies with the artist and promotion company to want to place measures on buying tickets so that only fans get them, We have seen some bands make reselling of tickets very very difficult. And in those situations I wouldn't mind missing out but in this one, where its clear i have missed out and theres plenty of people just trying to make a quick profit off music fans then that really Grinds my Gears.
You're damn right. Used to be most gigs you could get tickets for more or less up to the day, then it was "all be gone by tomorrow", now it's "Aw hell I'm 10 seconds too late". The other good one is the Booking fee, ticket face value £30, actual price £43.50 that sort of thing.
I actually just booked Slayer tickers for Dublin (thanks for reminding me!) and they're €60 each standard pricing :/ There has been loads of items in the news in the last year here in Ireland over ticket touting and the extortionate scalping that goes on. Ireland is insanely expensive for almost any gig, a lot of it down to criminal insurance costs for the events. What others would pay elsewhere might be half of what we normally pay here.
The slayer tickets were £55 before delivery and such so i believe the price for this at least seems about right. I would have happily paid a little more if it was the difference between no measures to stop this. and measures to stop this. The issue is what can you do about it.... Stop them posing them so soon after release.. touts will just wait a few weeks and list them later, the only change could be some kind of fundamental one to the law governing how tickets are sold to a customer via the retailer. Make it so these bits of software dont work for the first 48 hours or something like that. I have no clue how to fix it but its clear that something needs to be done
It's the same with anything limited in availability - Whatever the reason is - Someone will always try to make a quick buck, and there's a lot of those someones. I suspect it's even more true for 'farewell' type tours. It sucks, but short of having a contract that immediate resale isn't an option, there's not much choice other than the venue to buy back the ticket - Which has a worse chance of surviving than a snowball in hell.
The only viable option is to peg tickets at time of purchase to a named entrant (i.e. ticket only valid for that name) and obsessively check ID at the entrance so this is actually enforced in practice. This of course is a huge faff (doubly so if trying to book an I-don't-know-who-will-actually-be-attending-on-the-day group) for the customer, and because it cuts off the extremely lucrative second-hand ticket market is not going to be implemented by the wastes of Oxygen at Ticketmaster et al.
If all concert goers collectively refused to buy ANY tickets from ALL resellers? Forget it, never going to happen.
I find it hard to believe that it's actually legal for a company like Ticketmaster to also operate a 'peer to peer' ticket selling site tbh. I'm sure it must be but just feels wrong, I could understand a completely independent site for people selling tickets they've bought but not one that's run by the company they've potentially just bought the tickets from!
Yeah, Ticketmaster is the scum of the Earth. Why wouldn't they take advantage of a chance to earn fees from the same ticket twice? I wouldn't be shocked if there was some shady system in play that sold bulk resellers tickets in advance.
The only time I've ever experienced that was the RATM victory gig all those years ago. Okay there was no obvious resale of tickets, but the guys on the gate checking tickets didn't even look at the picture.
I was standing in the queue to try and see Lene Lovitch at the Lyceum many,many years ago when the arm came down to say the venue was full. At the same time a tout came out of the side door and started offering tickets. Touts and other greedy feckers should shot at dawn as far as i'm concerned. I have also been sold tickets at the face value when turning up at gigs without one by peeps who have had some friend pull out at the last moment. The current trend for quite a few people that just want to make money really peeves me.
I remember that, I found it easier to get tickets for the RATM gig that for this slayer one I am assuming because of all the extra ticket security that put off touts
