It seems these days that it’s near on impossible to buy tickets for any well known artists through official outlets. They all get snapped up and put on eBay within hours of them going on sale so you end up either paying over inflated prices to guarantee tickets or waiting till just before the event in an attempt to grab a last minute bargain from the dribs and drabs of the auctions that are put up in the last week… It even seems now that people are listing them on eBay before the tickets are officially released! The other day my friend was trying to get some Nine Inch Nails tickets for the Academy in Birmingham. He was on both the TicketMaster and TicketWeb sites at the time the tickets were released but they’d all sold out in the time it took for him to enter his card details. Upon checking eBay he found autions for numerous sets of tickets (@£40+ each) that been on there for up to a week! It’s just a huge online tout market place and there the only ones that benefit. The real fans that really want to see the bands just get screwed. /end rant
Have to agree with you. One of my coursemates has a business buying tickets for gigs and selling them at silly prices on ebay. Most recently he got some Blue tour tickets for £70 and sold them for £275. When the tour was cancelled he had put in a disclaimer only face value refunds, so he still made £205 profit on each ticket.
People are greedy. I buy tickets for local gigs and sell them on the university classifieds, there is always students who will buy them for 50%+ more than face value a few weeks before the gig. Nice easy money.
Checked online yesterday for tickets at my local venue - still available so took the 3 minute walk to the glorious Doncaster Dome to pick up 9 tickets for me + mates.... SOLD OUT. Gutted. So then I went back online to gigsandtours.com - still available. However there's around 2 quid booking fee per ticket and nearly 5 quid postage. Had to buy em though. Now that's annoying.
Could be worse at least you managed to get some without paying twice the price for them just to line a touts pockets.
I agree it's ridiculous - I also think there's some dodgy dealings going on with the touts. Other week I knew the ticket line for a gig I wanted to go to opened at 8:30am, as advertised. So rang up at 8:30 on the dot 'sorry we don't start selling those till 9am' they say. 'Oh right' I say and assume there was a mistake on the site etc. Call up a minute before 9am (hoping to avoid the 'hold' tone), say the date, act and venue. 'Sorry sold out'. WHAT!? 2 hours later they're all on ebay going for £100 more than they're worth.
I hate the people who sell these things on Ebay, scum the lot of them. They're as bad, if not worse, then the people at the doors who wander up and down the queues asking for spare tickets, buying them, and then selling them onto people for three times the price. This is the main reason, that online booking needs to be totally reformed. It's just so damn hard to get to any slightly popular gig, because these jerks increase the price three fold. I wish ticketmaster, or someone, would do something to stop this.
OI! I realise it's a minority thing but some people have genuine reasons for selling such tickets - I had to sell a couple to a sold out gig once cos' I couldnt get there
Sorry, shoulda been more carefull with my words. The lot of 'em, was really aimed at all the people who buy up loads of tickets, and sell them for several times the price. I have no problem with people who sell on tickets they can't use, if those were the only people selling tickets on Ebay it wouldn't be so bad. As for ticketmaster doing that, I dunno, I'm sure they'd make more in those £5 "admin" charges they stick onto every purchase if more people bought 1-2 tickets instead of whatever their maximum is.
I agree it is silly. I was soo mad trying to get Glasto tickets last year, had been for 2 years previous and loved it. As for the brixton nine inch Nails tickets, I got mine through a friend who was quick on the draw. He luckily got them through the normal channels. Mind you, he is tempted to put them on ebay himself......... Brixton
The rules on most, if not all, tickets state that reselling for a profit voids the ticket. Obviously there's no way to tell which tickets have been resold but eBay should crack down on it and remove auctions of tickets. I've seen a pair of weekend tickets will sell on eBay for £400-600 only a few days after the festival is sold out. [edit] It should be an eBay rule that tickets cannot be sold for profit, only the original price of the ticket.
I do that every year. Buy two reading festival tickets, one for me, one for ebay. Works out that I get a free ticket for myself in the end.
Hey it makes sence if you have a 0% interest credit card... I do feel for you guys trying to get soldout tickets, its an ass ill agree.
I'm sure ebay are more than happy with the situation. They're making a nice percentage on the final vaulations. eBay regulating ticket sales is the only way anything will happen with it but I just can't see that happening. They're happy for people to sell anything as long as it's legal...
I actually like the scalpers, they essentially allow market conditions to return. The first sellers almost allways price them under market prices, and the scalpers (through the bidding process) let people bid what they are willing to pay. It's far more efficient in a purely economical sense than the underprice/excess demand that it would be without scalpers.
True. Sites like this are a good idea. Though could have been implemented a lot better - nasty nasty nasty! And it's probably got less comeback from bad traders than ebay has (and we know how bad that can be).
I sold some radiohead tix on ebay, cos they sent me two sets of two instead of one. The charged me double, mind. Still made a fat profit on them tho. Two words. Social. Crutch. Oh no....wait, wrong thread.... ... Gold. Dust.
