How to combat ticket scalping
Dear Editor: “It’s taking far too long to kill the bots” by Les Leyne (Courier, Aug. 17).
I have a suggestion for a relatively simple way of putting the scalpers (who make bulk purchases of tickets using bots and then resell them at grossly-inflated prices) out of business. It would involve creating some new software for the original ticket sellers and also for the admission gates at the venues, but this should come within the category of a worthwhile expenditure.
Basically, the system would require that the credit card used to purchase the ticket be presented and checked at the gate along with the ticket.
If two or more tickets were purchased in the same transaction, all of the tickets would have to be presented together at the same entry point and there should be a maximum number of tickets which could be purchased in a single transaction in order to prevent a large number of people trying to pass through the entry point on a single card.
Anybody unable to present the matching credit card would have their tickets confiscated and resold at the face value to people waiting in line for returned tickets on a first-come, first-served basis. This would mean that the scalpers would be unable to resell their tickets because they wouldn’t be able to give the purchaser the appropriate credit card to gain them admission to the event.
Obviously, some provision would have to be made for people who have a genuine reason for being unable to present the card (i.e. cards which have been stolen or replaced for some other reason in between the date of purchase and the date of the event.) Such people might have to have their ID manually checked at an entry point reserved for the purpose.
However, this should not be an insurmountable problem because there would only be a very small number of genuine cases at any one event. It would also be necessary for the ticket seller’s website to make it very clear before making the purchase that the credit card used would have to be presented at the venue for the ticket to be accepted.
This would alert anybody trying to use somebody else’s credit card that the same card would have to be available at the event.
Brian Butler Penticton