$950 blown after child buys on scalping site
Gratis Lions tickets on-sell for $1000
The moral of this story is: “Don’t leave your laptop with an 11-year-old.”
Dunedin mother Leah Harper is more than $950 out of pocket after her daughter accidentally bought tickets to Ed Sheeran’s Dunedin concert from a scalping website.
Ticketmaster put pre-sale tickets to the event online at 2pm on Tuesday.
Harper said she had been logged on to her laptop for more than an hour, trying to buy four $159 tickets.
But at 3.20pm, the website was still processing her order and she had to leave to attend an appointment.
She left the laptop in the care of her 11-year-old daughter.
“Nothing was coming up, so she decided to have a look and see if she could get tickets elsewhere.
“She typed in Ed Sheeran tickets and the Viagogo website popped up at the top of the list.” Viagogo is an
If you tell them it’s an 11-year-old child and they’ve made a mistake, there should be some comeback on this. Leah Harper
online marketplace for buying and selling tickets to live events.
“All of my details came up preexisting in the computer as soon as she put my name in. She sort of assumed it was all good.”
She ended up with three tickets for $1223, which should have only cost $90 each, Harper said.
The money came out of her bank account immediately.
Harper said her bank could not stop the transaction, so she made several phone calls and emails to the Viagogo website, asking for her money back. “Viagogo emailed back saying the only way to get my money back was to relist the tickets on their site and sell them again.
“That’s appalling. It’s really awful. If you tell them it’s an 11-year-old child and they’ve made a mistake, there should be some comeback on this.”
Harper said her daughter was distraught. “She thought she was helping. She thought I’d be so excited. But when I saw what had happened, I thought, oh no.
“The moral of the story is, don’t leave your daughter with the laptop.”
The Major Events Management Act 2007 makes it illegal to on-sell a tournament ticket for profit in New Zealand, and scalpers can be fined up to $5000. However, it is restricted to major international events, such as the Rugby World Cup or Cricket World Cup.
The reselling or scalping of tickets to concerts, entertainment events or one-off matches is a legal practice. New Zealand Rugby is looking into reports that a pair of complimentary Lions tickets has been sold for $1000.
Fairfax reported that two tickets to the July 1 All Blacks test match against the British and Irish Lions in Wellington were being sold online by a woman who originally paid $1000 for them.
The match at Westpac Stadium is one of three against the All Blacks, with all three games selling out months ago.
The complimentary tickets were for Category B and would normally have cost $379. The Lions series comes under the Major Events Management Act, which means tickets cannot legally be sold online for a profit.
The Lions’ tickets terms and conditions also say tickets can only be purchased through official sellers, and cannot be sold for more than the original sale price.
Holders of on-sold tickets could be refused entry to the match and any breach of the conditions meant the NZRU could reclaim the tickets.
Fairfax reported the tickets were being sold on Facebook by Faith Guild.
Guild would not say who she bought them from but her plans to go to the game had fallen through so she was selling them.
She said she was not aware they were marked “comp” for complimentary when she advertised them.
More than 20,000 international visitors are expected over the course of the tour in June and July, and 200 million people or more are expected to watch internationally.