eBay slams UK.gov touting ban

Holy Guacamole!

E-Bay have talked some sense!

I need a lie down.

Anybody fed up with Red tape labour??

"We have also seen a growth in the secondary market with tickets block-booked by people whose sole aim is to sell on at a profit," said Burnham."

So the organiser has made their cut.. so the only looser is the idiot that spunks up 4x the face value to buy a ticket... Fool and his money.... etc..

If nobody paid the tout the tout would go bankrupt.. I love those stories on Watchdog where some idiot has paid up front and arranged to meet a stranger in a carpark.. who then doesnt show up... like what do you expect???

Anybody fed up with Red tape labour?? Isnt it time they tried cutting some bureaucracy instead of continuously adding to it?? How about a final year of legislation culling?? :)

No wonder the country costs so much to run and live in these days....

How hard is it to setup a website that limits ticket transactions? Such as registering first to a valid email address, limit to 4 tickets, credit card only to the address of the holder etc. etc..

They would say that wouldn't they?

eBay stand to lose money if not allowed to flog on tickets. Yes there are the odd legitimate cases where someone can't attend an event. eBay are just taking the p1ss.

eBay and consumer protection

"They end up either driving the trade on to other parts of the internet - or even worse, on to street corners where there is no consumer protection if things go wrong."

And eBay said this? I don't think I need to comment further.

Lets make it official

Ever seen "Price bid tv"? Where you put your bid in for one of [x] many items, and the minimum bid to obtain an item creeps up accordingly? Why not just make it official and sell tickets directly this way? Have a cutoff of 4 weeks beforehand to allow for organising accomodation / travel, and have a waitlist of people who can pick up other tickets?

Am I the only one thinking here?

Ebay correct for once!

Ebay's spot on for a change. If you're not going to let customers return unwanted tickets for a refund, then you can't stop them selling them on without looking like a bunch of jerks - although that does appear to be the image Labour's after these days.

And when you look at places like viagogo, ebay and the touts seem almost to be legitimate in their pricing.

The whole thing...

... has the ghastly stench of righteous indignation.

I agree with Flatspot above. It's all about the fact that in spite of the increasingly outrageous ticket prices for events, people are still willing to pay more on the 'secondary market' when availability of first-sell tickets runs out. Promoters have been playing on this with the "George W Bush allocation" ("look, I just found some more [strike]votes[/strike]tickets").

Frankly, everyone needs to stop whingeing.

Paris, because she likes a good moan.

Goverment request moon on a stick

So the government are asking for the moon on a stick again - that's fine we'll just whip up a magic system that will stop people form being able to sell the tickets then.

All too common

Seems to be too much effort nowadays for the Government to go through the traditional route of introducing legislation.

It's even too much effort to go through their favoured back-door route of the Order in Council and Ministerial Order to get want they want introduced.

So now they just say 'do exactly what we want, or we'll introduce laws to make you do it'.

Where exactly is the incentive in that? If you're going to do something - particularly if a cost is involved - it may as be because they made you do it rather than because you 'volunteered' under pressure.

Personally I suspect this kind of measure is 'suggested' when they realise that an actual law has no chance of being introduced, or would fail under subsequent judicial scrutiny. Whereas with 'voluntary' measures & codes of practice this is no longer a problem.

F*ck government by decree.

Re: Hmm

"Surely event tickets are a scarce commodity, and so will be priced according to demand on an open market? If people are willing and able to pay hundreds of pounds for rare tickets, then why not?"

If an event is popular, because people who want to go to the event are buying tickets to go to the event, then fair enough. However, event tickets become an even more scarce commodity when touts are block-buying.

If touts block-buy, the tickets become artificially rare and so they can charge hundreds of pounds for "rare" tickets.

Stop block buying (and block selling), rather than stop all "2nd hand" selling, and everyone (except the touts) is (mostly) happy. The people selling tickets first hand, and the people who run the 2nd hand markets can do this.

Paris, cos she doesn't need to sell tickets for her shows...

Priorities...

I agree with Flatspot too - I am also fed up with labour. They need to sort their priorities out - why is it ok for them to legislate on this alleged 'abuse' of consumer rights and yet they refuse point blank to get involved in the phorm debacle - which is a much more real threat and one that will affect a lot more people...

The cynic in me believes that it may be something to do with being able to cream their own information from the phorm harvest to keep an ever closer eye on an increasingly 'untrustworthy' (that should read 'untrusting') populace.

Try a new method of selling tickets

Well actually the promotors of the event should try a different method of selling the tickets. For example when the tickets to the event go on sale, 4 or 3 months before the concert date the price (for example) would be 500 pounds per seat

when you buy the ticket you get to specify which seat you want. Each day the ticket price goes down (1, 5 or 10 pounds per day), total number of tickets left is shown.

The ticket touts can buy as many tickets as they want, they have to resell in competition with the concert promotor. The real keen fans will pay the 500 pounds, others will wait untill the price comes down to what they can afford if they want to go.

@Flatspot

"How hard is it to setup a website that limits ticket transactions? Such as registering first to a valid email address, limit to 4 tickets, credit card only to the address of the holder etc. etc.."

Easily bypassed. There are a couple of guys at work who buy tickets to sell on eBay, at least 6 other colleagues have purchased tickets on their behalf (myself included). I pay for the tickets on my credit card and get them sent to my home, my colleagues pay me as soon as I have placed the order (the total cost plus a little bit) and I bring the tickets in for them when they arrive.

We did manage to get 28 tickets for one event where the ticket office was limiting sales to 4 per customer.

Non-paying bidder

1. Set up an ebay account with bogus details.

2. Get some auction sniping software

3. Set up huge bids for every ticket sale you can find

4. Win all the auctions

5. Don't pay

6. Touts have to relist

Repeat until a) touts stop listing or b) the ticketed event has been and gone, leaving touts with worthless tickets.

@Ian Dennison

"Ever seen "Price bid tv"? Where you put your bid in for one of [x] many items, and the minimum bid to obtain an item creeps up accordingly?"

Don't those scam channels usally work the -other- way round. The minimum bid goes -down- until all the items are sold (so they claim) and everybody gets it at the same price (to make sure people aren't afraid to make early purchases).

And anyway they add £50 post and package or some ludicrous figure like that, plus £20 for the call to the premium number... ok maybe not quite as much but still loads more than it should be.

The other day flicked past one of those channels, and saw they had come tacky ring which they claimed would normally sell at £16k... watched to see the first price drop... down to £899... yeah right, of course it was worth £16k..

Real auction might work though.

Sorry, no refunds

Yet again, the entertainment industry is trying to sell the same item repeatedly.

Buy a ticket in the primary market and you have to pay the face value of the ticket. Plus a booking fee. Plus an administration fee. Plus a credit card fee. Plus postage. And they have the cheek to complain about other people profiteering?

Most ticket vendors refuse to give refunds unless the event is cancelled. You have to buy your ticket months in advance, often before the lineup has been announced and if you can't go, tough. If they provided a refund mechanism for the face value of the ticket (minus yet another admin fee, probably) they could sell the ticket again, along with all the additional charges.

As for the phoney concern about "real fans" being deprived of the chance of going to an event, B***SH*T! As an example, something like 30% of the new Wembley Stadium is set aside for corporate hospitality and ends up unused. Perhaps if less tickets were allocated to corporate hospitality, there would be more available for fans.

@Righteously Indignant

Nah you got that wrong!

It just that there is no potential for kick backs or directorships when they don't get re elected.

Thanks for nothing

Yet another set of stupid laws from a stupid Goverment! Why do they feel the need to legislate about this, its supply demand market economics for christ sake. If there is a problem with block buying and reselling and fans are getting upset then its the vendors problem as they are upsetting their fans by block selling. They dont actually care though, neither do i and neither should the goverment.

There are good reasons for the football tout ban on safety reasons but other than that i would leave the market alone.

If fans are prepared to pay the price the tout asks then fine its their money and the touts profit. If not then its the touts loss and if it upsets the fans its the vendors loss overall.

I just don't care for any more stupid laws, the BBC just reported that a man got fined a few hundred quid for having his wheelie bin too full, 4" over the lid, heinous. Although they recently just started fortnightly collections rather than weekly and the bins are too small but Labour don't seem have foreseen this!

This goverment takes with one hand and takes again with the other and then uses its feet kick you in the balls with yet more crap legislation.

creepy functionality

When punters buy a ticket ask them to include the name of the person who is going to use it. Then when said person tries to use the ticket s/he can be asked for identification to prove that they are the correct person. This could be nicely included with a new shiny national ID card...

Glastonbury tickets

Glastonbury seems to have cured the tout problem by putting a photo on the ticket. No ID card required since you will probably bring your face along to match the ticket.

There are even tickets still available for normal people to buy - so clearly the touts don't like the idea.

I'm with eBay...

... On this one. I don't see why tickets to sporting (or other) events should be any different to other goods, which can be bought and sold freely (let's leave software licenses to one side for the moment).

People buying tickets up front are effectively betting on how popular the event will be. Obviously some events are always likely to sell out, but that to me suggests that the original ticket price is too low, and should be put up until demand matches supply.

Ultimately, some people are going to be priced out of the market, but that's the same for pretty much everything - I'd like a penthouse apartment on the river and a Ferrari, but it ain't gonna happen. If demand is greater than supply, there'll always be rationing by some means, and price is the accepted, and probably best, method.

I do agree with the exception for 'Free' events, and (somewhat reluctantly), for football. Not easy to enforce, though.

Mine's the armour-plated one!

Richie

@Mister Cheese

Totally agree with the above!

Instead of introducing more stupid legislation - provide the option to either upload a photo or give the names of the people who the tickets are for, that way people have the option to bring photographic ID to the venue if they don't have a photo to upload!

If the ticket sellers were smart, they could operate a change/cancellation policy and charge punters a small fee to change any details or to cancel their booking, just like airlines, such as easyJet, have done for years! At least this way, the touts are taken out of the equation, the sellers get more revenue and even the taxman is happy!

The government need to focus on the wider issues of the country and not be wasting OUR money with such stupid nonsense!!!

Easy option

E-Touting is only so common now because it is easy. It takes only minutes to stick tickets on ebay and make a few hundred quid in profit. The traditional tout had to wait around outside the venue for a while to sell them, so effectively spending more more and more time, plus the risk that it would be wasted if no one bought the tickets.

If someone can stop e-touting then it would be a good thing.

More "Voluntary Solution" Rubbish

We've got a government that loves to legislate on anything it can, so when it starts saying that it is promoting a voluntary scheme and if that doesn't work it will legislate, it can only mean one thing - legislation is unworkable and the government is trying to bluff its way through.

@Dennis Armstrong

Great idea! No need for photo ID, or restrictions on buying or reselling. The promoter's price would always be lower than any tout's, so no one would buy secondhand until the promoter runs out. In theory, touts could monopolize the market by buying up most of the tickets early on, but the cost would be prohibitory (tens of thousands for a single theater performance, millions for a stadium). Reselling enough of them to make a profit would be difficult, given the high prices they'd have to charge.

Face Value

I am 100% in favour of stopping ticket touts and block booking, as people who don't have big money to spend are deprived of attending the events. We are a sick society where only the rich can do these things.

Make it so that tickets can be sold on ebay or anywhere but legally cannot be sold for more than face value.

Mines the coat I bought at a charity shop. Hope theres some tickets in the pocket.

Nanny state strikes again...

Don't HM Gov have anything better to do? You know, like selling us further down the river to the US of Europe?

If I buy a couple of tickets for one of these premium events and then find I'm unable to go, why the hell should I be prevented from selling a ticket I cannot use on ebay?

I guess eBay should be able to set a max bid on a ticket, so a ticket cannot be sold above face value, or maybe face value plus 5% to cover the eBay commission. That sounds like a nice middle ground solution to me, although we all know what eBay are like at policing listings. I've lost count how many listings I have reported that have "BMW not Audi not VW not Merc not Ford" in their title. I could give them a regular expression to spot these if I could find someone willing to listen!

As someone else has already mentioned, e-touting is pretty new. I'm sure all the touts can remember how to do it the traditional way in a big coat with large pockets outside the venue. "Pssst, 'ere gov, do you need a ticket?"

If they really want to stop this, surely the thing to do is stop the ticket agents selling 200 tickets to one person in the first place!