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Furious at this legalised ticket touting charade !!


tonybassplayer
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Tried to get tickets recently to take my middle daughter to see One Direction who she is totally absorbed with but like many others I was unsuccessful and it was "Sold Out"

Well excuse my French but that is total and absolute f*****g b****x as the net including ebay is awash with stupidly over priced tickets.

These companies have obviously had the chance to block purchase tickets and then sell them on at stupid money. It really p****s me of that there is not a centralised point that all tickets are sold direct to the general public ( also known as the fans who put them there )

I know my rant won't change things but it just annoys me that such a parasitical industry is allowed to profiteer on people. The original prices are stupid enough but these others are ludicrous.

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It annoys me as well. I tried to get tickets for Kate Bush for a mate who was away. As everyone knows, Ticketmaster was sold out in miinutes. I scanned other outlets and found Get Me In. There were tickets on sale within minutes for £800 on the site. I then found that Get Me In is a place where people sell tickets, and it is ran by Ticketmaster. So they get a cut of the original, then another cut for touting. Seems that they are the biggest touts in the industry.

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This gets to me too, though the government is leaving up to the "industry" to govern itself but as you pointed out they're profiting from it so nothing will change and it really is the fans loosing out.
Though I did get royal blood tickets recently and there was an explicit warning saying that your name would be printed on the tickets and you wouldn't be let in without some form of ID. Which is some sort of progress, I guess?

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The whole 'ticket purchaser must be present with ID & booking credit card' cr*p that some promoters have launched to try and combat touts has simply jacked the tout prices and kept out a lot of real fans. O2 do this frequently.

Personally I've enjoyed lots of gigs where I've paid more than face value for - but at these 'card holder present' gigs, the spare tickets are scarcer, and so way more expensive. Touts will always exist, it's a shame that for many gigs only a very small wealthy elite (or people with more money than sense) can now afford to go.

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I've purchased tickets for gigs where they tell you to take your original credit card etc. on a couple of occassions, and have done so, but have never actually been required to produce the credit card. Guess the touts know this. I really can't be bothered with big gigs now, would have liked to go to Foo Fighters next summer, but the already ridiculously high prices and inevitable fast sell out means it'll be a hell of a lot of money to stand in an echoey stadium several hundred yards from the action. Bah humbug! Small venues for me.

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In 2009 when Enlgnad hosted the T20 cricket worldcup they had a system where you went online at a specific time (9am I think) on a certain day and you were placed in a queue and told how long it would take you to get to the front to buy tickets (about 4 hours IIRC) I signed up bang on 9am, waited for my four hours only to be told when I got there that all England, India and Pakistan games were sold out... I went on ebay and there were thousands of tickets available at ten times the face value. The event was impossible to buy tickets for, they had obviously all been purchased in advance.

It was a farce and the industry needs regulating... If One direction can sell out a venue at the prices the touts are charging then why aren't the venue charging that in the first place? I would if I owned the venue... it's the whole tout thing that pisses people off, feeling like you've been conned...

Edited by CamdenRob
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I wouldn't be surprised if it's a conspiracy between Mr Cowell and the touts... ie. I'll sell you all the tickets at a reasonable face price so it looks like I'm not taking advantage of people with kids desperate to see 1D. Then you sell those tickets on ebay at ten times the face value and bung half the profits into my account in the caymen islands... everyone is a winner....

Edited by CamdenRob
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Vote with your wallet.

Abandon the oversold stadium gigs for people who already have too much money, and try supporting your local bands at local venues.

Not an easy thing to explain to a teenaged daughter who wants to see One Direction, but then neither is re-cycling.

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One of the sites I was on yesterday was openly flouting that the face value of the tickets was pretty much half price of their price.

The bands must have the power to change this for their tours but interestingly don't seem to want to.

My guess is that some go on sale at face value ( plus booking charge so not really face value then ) and the others ( majority ?? ) are sold above face value to the touting companies who then put their chunk on.

Just imagine if an airline ticket was advertised for £50 when it was really £87.50 !!! Seem to think this may have been visited before :-(

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[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1418373924' post='2629588']try supporting your local bands at local venues.

[/quote]

Indeed. I took my seven year old daughter to see a pub blues band last weekend. She really [b][i]got[/i][/b] what the music was about and felt a real kinship with the bald, overweight, dull musicians who were going through the motions and almost staying in time. The long noodling guitar solos in E really impressed her too.

It's definitely the way forward.

:mellow:

Edited by Conan
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Its something that makes my blood boil as well...

Trouble is if people keep buying these over priced tickets then it will carry on unless they bring in laws or different methods of selling tickets.

I say you should have to show your ID matching the name and address on your tickets or have to produce the card you paid for them on upon entry to the venue.

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[quote name='Conan' timestamp='1418374383' post='2629596']
Indeed. I took my seven year old daughter to see a pub blues band last weekend. She really [b][i]got[/i][/b] what the music was about and felt a real kinship with the bald, overweight, dull musicians who were going through the motions and almost staying in time. The long noodling guitar solos in E really impressed her too.

It's definitely the way forward.

:mellow:
[/quote]

Yes, it's great when they get started on the roots of it all at an early age, isn't it?

:)

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This is one of the reasons why I don't bother with big name gigs any more. Others include:[list]
[*]Being so far from the stage that you can only 'see' the performers on TV screens.
[*]Grossly over-priced refreshments.
[*]Grossly over-priced parking.
[*]Huge queues to leave the car park.
[/list]
I have much more fun these days seeing tribute bands. Last weekend I saw a Steely Dan tribute (£0) and Pink Floyd tribute (£5 to charity), and both were excellent. I cycled to the first gig, and (at Mrs Axe's insistence) drove 4 miles to the second, where parking was free.

Edited by JapanAxe
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[quote name='Happy Jack' timestamp='1418373924' post='2629588']
Vote with your wallet.

Abandon the oversold stadium gigs for people who already have too much money, and try supporting your local bands at local venues.
[/quote]

All you get around my way is local bands in the local venues. The venues aren't on any of the 'circuits' so to speak. As a result all you get is a diet of folk, punk or the usual covers bands. It doesn't do a lot for me :(

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Not much help here and I think you'll spend over the top to make your daughter happy..that is entirely understandable but it still stinks.
I recently booked for the Royal Albert Hall and the tickets from the usual suspects were nigh on £200 for 2 ...
I went direct to RAH and got 2 very god box tickets for £112.
But then, again, I could easily vote with my wallet... your teenage daughter isn't going to be of that mind-set... understandably..

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The whole ticket thing is bad enough but when those companies then setup sites for resale it takes it far beyond the piss take it was to begin with. They get paid all over again and some even hold back tickets to sell on a higher price on their resale sites. £&@?!&£ robbing bunch of £&@!s.

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Wouldn't it be funny if somebody bought an extra ticket to move on at a profit and nobody bought it. That's the only way that this annoying practice will stop. I was after a couple of Foo Fighters tickets for Manchester next summer. Went on line at the designated time and got them. I could have bought 4, sold two on for twice the price and gone to the concert for no cost to me but IT'S WRONG!!! Give another fan the opportunity to buy tickets to see them at face value. Unfortunately, the next person along may have bought more than he/she needed to sell but that is on their conscience not mine.

Unless people stop buying them from the (legal & illegal) touts, this corrupt industry will continue to flourish. It's in our hands people. Don't support them.

Edited by mr zed
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If someone can't make it to a gig, you need a legitimate way to sell on the ticket, but if you're of decent values you just cover your costs. I don't begrudge someone a few quid for the admin.

Back to the OP - what you often find is the highest resale prices are immediately after the official sale has sold out. As the weeks go on, and these extortionate tickets fail to sell (plus the artist sometimes adds extra dates), there are better prices to be had. Often a few weeks before the tickets are a fraction of the resale value they started at.

That said - 1D might be a unique mental world of its own.

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