Why ARE Viagogo still getting away with ripping people off?
A granny who paid £600 for three £65 Dancing On Ice tickets. A mother cheated out of £335 for worthless Ed Sheeran seats. No wonder victims are demanding ...
ASTREAM of emails detailing the misery caused by the music and sports ticketing website Viagogo has flowed into the Mail since this newspaper’s investigation into the company’s rip-off tactics.
Readers have described their horror at being charged hundreds of pounds more than they expected to pay for appearances by Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, Paul Weller and a host of other big names.
The disclosures will add to the clamour for tougher regulation of the secondary ticketing market, which allows middle-man internet companies to levy sometimes extortionate mark-ups and fees on tickets that have often been obtained by professional touts.
Sometimes, tickets are sold by Viagogo even before they have been released for sale by promoters, resulting in 11th-hour deliveries to customers panicking about long-anticipated events for which they have booked hotels and even flights.
Viagogo is one of the worst offenders among the major secondary ticketing sites, an industry now worth £1 billion a year in the UK.
It uses a tactic called ‘drip pricing’ — concealing the true cost of tickets by adding ‘booking fees’, delivery charges and VAT only at the last moment — just before customers press the ‘Buy’ button.
Buyers are at that stage distracted by a ‘timer’ suggesting only seconds and minutes remain before scarce tickets are snapped up by other fans who, they are warned, are eyeing the tickets at that very moment.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is trying to stop the big four secondary ticketing sites — Viagogo, StubHub (owned by eBay), Seatwave and Get Me In! (both owned by Ticketmaster) — using drip pricing to hide the true cost of tickets.
Add-ons such as booking fees and shipping should be shown when a price is quoted, says the ASA.
But when Money Mail went on Viagogo yesterday, the basic seat price — not the inflated final price — was shown right up until credit card details were demanded.
And, all the time, there was that clock, warning the panicky buyer that they had just five minutes or so to secure their dream tickets.
Many ticket-buyers do not realise they have been fleeced by the extra charges until they inspect their bank and credit card accounts.
And some have found Viagogo has given them false information about the face value of tickets.
Customers are ‘guaranteed’ tickets, even though Viagogo is not always in possession of the ticket when bookings are made.
This can mean customers end up being given inferior seats, either with a restricted view or standing room only — even if they are elderly or ill people who could not possibly stand through an entire concert.
Viagogo — whose executives refused to appear before MPs on the Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee in March last year — hides behind parent companies in overseas jurisdictions and keeps irate customers at arm’s length with sluggish responses to complaints.
Some who threaten legal action receive letters warning them that it could incur heavy costs.
On the internet, Viagogo seems very open — paying Google to place it high on search results. This prominence often fools ticket-buyers into believing they are visiting an ‘official’ site. But Viagogo’s tickets are often harvested by touts or resold by the original ticket holder.
Artists including Sheeran and Adele have sought to crack down by insisting tickets carry the holder’s name.
But Viagogo customers are told tickets are ‘100 pc guaranteed’, which means innocent secondhand purchasers who trusted the company’s promise can then find themselves barred from events.
Take this year’s Last Night Of The Proms, scheduled at the Royal Albert Hall in September. When ‘last night of the proms tickets’ is entered on Google, Viagogo appears just below the RAH site — offering tickets for as much as £2,200 each.
Yet the tickets, which can cost as little as £6 to those prepared to turn up on the day, have not yet been released for sale.
A Royal Albert Hall spokesman says: ‘ The Hall is the only official ticket- seller for the BBC Proms and tickets for the 2018 season are not available to purchase until Saturday, May 12.
‘ Secondary ticketing is an industry-wide issue and we work closely with all our promoters to assist with their specific terms and conditions of sale.’
Reg Walker, of the internet investigations firm The Iridium Consultancy, says: ‘ Quite why Viagogo has not been held to account in court is a mystery.’
But Viagogo, ‘the world’s largest secondary marketplace for tickets to live events’, carries on regardless, with precious little intervention by the UK authorities, leaving ordinary people to pick up the cost.
Viagogo failed to respond to an emailed request for comment.
CHARITY TICKETS BENEFIT VIAGOGO
VIAGOGO charged £800 for two ‘touted’ tickets for an exhibition charity tennis match between Andy Murray and Roger Federer — more than five times the face value.
It meant the company ended up receiving more money from the tickets than Unicef, the charity that benefited from the fixture.
Tennis fan Daphne Beale, 73, from Gloucestershire, who bought the tickets, says: ‘I thought: “I have been conned,” and I was worried I would not be able to get into the venue because my name wasn’t on the ticket.’ The tickets’ face value was £76 each, but the final price was £400 each after booking fees and VAT were added.
When Mrs Beale arrived at the Glasgow venue, in November last year, she discovered people sitting nearby had purchased tickets from the same seller, who had bought a block of seats.
‘You feel a bit sick. You feel you’ve been conned,’ says Mrs Beale. ‘It was for charity. It shouldn’t be allowed. Does Andy Murray’s management team know his fans were ripped off? They should be aware.’
ED SHEERAN CRACKS DOWN ON TOUTS
LAST June, Andrea Exley, from Hull, bought two tickets for an Ed Sheeran concert in Manchester next month, on May 26, at a cost of £335.51. Mrs Exley, 50, knew the price was exorbitant, but wanted to treat her two daughters.
She then learned that tickets bought on the secondary market were invalid unless resold on the website Twickets, which lets fans buy and sell tickets at face value.
Last July, Sheeran cancelled 10,000 tickets in an attempt to prevent sites such as Viagogo from ripping off his fans. Consequently, Mrs Exley’s tickets are invalid.
The event organiser, Kilimanjaro, has sent letters to such buyers to help them claim back their money — but Mrs Exley’s credit card company says a refund can only be made if she and her daughters turn up at the venue and are then turned away. ‘Doing that would be causing more disappointment for my daughters,’ she says.
‘Although out of pocket at present, I absolutely applaud Ed Sheeran in what he is trying to do. I just wish I had known.’
GRAN WON’T BUY ONLINE AGAIN
PAULINE LEPPARD, 75, wanted to treat her granddaughter, Leah, aged ten, to tickets to the filming of the ITV show Dancing On Ice.
She thought she would be getting three tickets for £222, not noticing the figure had jumped to £609 just before she confirmed payment.
The tickets had a face value of just £65 each. Leah was ‘over the moon’ when she heard about the plans for March 25, but her grandmother is now worried about how she will pay her credit cardd billbill.
Her daughter, Phroso Leppard, says: ‘My mother was really upset — she really wanted to treat her granddaughter. She’s really worried about doing anything online now. It’s knocked her confidence.’
KATH PAYS COST OF BEING MISLED
KATHLEEN SPILLANE, 64, bought six tickets from Viagogo in July last year to see Beautiful: The Carole King Musical for herself and five friends, after being informed by the site that only a few tickets were available.
‘It was only after I had completed my order that the charges for the tickets were shown,’ she says.
‘To my horror, the total cost was £411.95 for tickets with a face value of £15.50 each. That’s £318.95 on top of the tickets cost.’
Mrs Spillane was so embarrassed at being ripped off that she did not tell her friends — all pensioners —