If you feel that should be in the complaint thread feel free to remove this new thread but I reckon that's a slighty different topic: how on earth can Viagogo resell tickets that haven't been physically delivered yet ?? For those who have bought there so far, what are you actually buying ?

Also, given the situation this morning at 9:05 it's pretty obvious that the secondary market is not only made by human reselling, but also by robots... only robot can be that fast to select/buy/resell.

I just want to know why is this not illegal ?

It's a scam.

Pure and simple.

Can anyone tell how this works, where do viagogo buy them from, how come they are allowed to buy thousands before anyone else?..........

Well, i don't believe this is a scam, those brands have actual offices (next to the O2 for instance), and look to have all the necessary legal licenses and autorisation to do their business and sell tickets, do advertisement and everything.

However they are clearly selling tickets that have not even been physically delivered to the buyer, i wonder how that can legally work... so there's a big mystery around this.

Someone on the Hyde park thread said he had bought from Viagogo yesterday, that'd be interesting to have his view and see what he actually purchased.

The ticket I bought was general admission . Price £154.93. As I said in the other thread I panicked as I could not load/find the Barclays site and as I missed out on the O2 I bought them. I believe it is all legit but a rip off. I cannot wait to go I have never seen the band before and as I am originally from New Zealand I never thought I would! My brother now lives two blocks away so all good.

Quote
beepee2
Well, i don't believe this is a scam

If it's legal, then it's easy to say it's not a scam.

IMO, there is a moral question in a company scooping up large amounts of tickets quickly, for resale at highly inflated prices.

I'm usually a "free market" kind of guy, but people who would normally be able to afford face value tickets are almost instantly being shut out of the market.
Practices like this smack of price-fixing, price-manipulation or whatever the correct term is.

It would be interesting to hear an opinion on this from someone in the legal profession.

Quote
Mattty7619
The ticket I bought was general admission . Price £154.93. As I said in the other thread I panicked as I could not load/find the Barclays site and as I missed out on the O2 I bought them. I believe it is all legit but a rip off. I cannot wait to go I have never seen the band before and as I am originally from New Zealand I never thought I would! My brother now lives two blocks away so all good.

Hi,

thanks for the explanation, but, the guy who sold it to you still doesn't have the ticket, so what did you actually buy, as you've paid actual money for a pledge, more than an actual good ?

How can the secondary market resell [any commodity] that are not delivered yet ?

That's how the banking system has been working for the last 30 years.

Obviously rock shows tix have become another commodity like corn, pork chops, gold crude etc...

Quote
Mattty7619
The ticket I bought was general admission . Price £154.93. As I said in the other thread I panicked as I could not load/find the Barclays site and as I missed out on the O2 I bought them. I believe it is all legit but a rip off. I cannot wait to go I have never seen the band before and as I am originally from New Zealand I never thought I would! My brother now lives two blocks away so all good.

You will get your tickets, no problem. If the original seller - assuming an external original seller actually exists - doesn't provide the tickets Viagogo will find someone else and honour the deal. In this respect they are quite a legitimate company. Don't get me wrong, I'm very upset that I couldn't get Tier 1 or Tier 2 this morning while the secondary sites are awash with them but I do know from experience that Viagogo are quite reliable to deal with.

Anyway, I'm sure the Stones will blow you away and the last thing you'll be thinking of when you leave that night is the ticket price.

Yes - the ticket I bought for 25/11 through Seatwave failed to arrive and Seatwave provided a replacement without hesitation. The price is a scandal, but the service is good.

However, it has been blindingly obvious for years that these secondary agencies have methods of buying up tickets at speed and in bulk that are not available to us mere mortals, and this means that most tickets will never be available to the general public at face value. It's a racket, and something needs to be done about it.

Don't get me wrong, i'm quite pissed off to see this as well and I've spent hours today trying to get ticket, phoning my bank which blocked my card... asking a friend to buy for me, etc... BUT, if people are willing to pay 500 for tickets, then I don't see how you can prevent this demand from existing, one way or another, people will try to grab them, and resell them if there's a demand for those !

In a way that's a funny allegory of the supply/demand theory... the only way around that would be to allocate quotas to fans, to people who purchased from stones archives, or things like that...

Well, there's always the Glastonbury model, which effectively prevents any reselling by putting the buyer's ID and photograph on the ticket. I don't think Viagogo etc. get a look-in there. But it's probably too much hassle for the average concert.

Quote
Edith Grove

Quote
beepee2
Well, i don't believe this is a scam

If it's legal, then it's easy to say it's not a scam.

It's a legal scam.

I believe the promotors are involved.

Wasn't there a Channel 4 documentary about this crap?

Quote
GravityBoy

Wasn't there a Channel 4 documentary about this crap?

Yes, although they failed to find hard evidence of collusion with promoters from what I remember. They filmed Viagogo employees buying tix with multiple credit cards. Quite how they manage to get prime seats so easily wasn't covered, only that they bought up sizable batches of tickets directly and as such were far from merely providing a service for normal fans to sell their tickets on.

Already there:

[www.viagogo.com]

Most expensive around 9.000 USD

There was a TV programme on recently (UK) showing how these companies do it, they have computer programmes to obtain the tickets as well as people with a fistful of credit cards buying the tickets up. It's something which the UK Government needs to deal with as it has become a mutli million dollar industry and the losers - yes, it's you and me, the average ticket buyer.

I'd either go for the Glastonbury model, or go back to queuing and postal applications. It was much fairer.

Ticket Liquidator has one pit ticket for sale for over $10,000!

The same way Viagogo are selling tickets for the last night of the proms, which aren't even available until next month. Speculative BS IMO.

Lee