Finally, secondary ticket agencies are shamed
There is an interesting article on the Guardian Music Blog that assesses secondary ticketing services such as Viagogo and GetMeIn, the kind of services that I have bashed month after month on this blog because of the fact that they are not fair outlets for buying tickets. Yesterday, Helienne Lindval, the person who wrote the piece, called out both companies and shamed this farcical piece of business. First, a bit of her conversation with head of Viagogo Eric Baker:
Eric: We don’t resell free tickets. We believe that if you pay for a ticket, just as you pay for a car or a book, you have the right to resell it. It’s yours.
But the sellers can be touts or companies that make a business off of reselling tickets.
Eric: It doesn’t matter. If you buy stocks on the stockmarket, you don’t know who sold you the stock. You don’t care, because the FTSE makes it secure. That’s how Viagogo works. It’s like Amazon.
But on Amazon a used book is usually cheaper.
Eric: It could be a vintage book or something like that. OK, obviously you’re right – it could be different.
Now a read a bit of her conversation with Andrew Blachman, the head of GetMeIn:
How would I know how much I could charge for a ticket on your site?
Andrew: We show the available inventory for that event. You’ll see what other people are selling their tickets for, and what previous sales have been for. We also have something that we’re rolling out where you can set your price and then as the event gets nearer we will automatically ratchet that price lower if you tell us to.
Andrew tells me that sellers do not commit fraud on their site, “because there’s no incentive. They’re not going to get their money. They’re also going to get fined and pursued by us.” This is a claim that the Guardian’s legal correspondent Afua Hirsch disputed recently, when her tickets to Beyoncé failed to arrive and GetMeIn refused to help.
I’m glad that I read it, because it confirms to me that the people running these companies know that they’re ripping off people and that I’m not hitting my head against a brick wall.
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