Want to stop online sharks? Then stop paying their silly prices for tickets!

RARELY in these litigious times is a Government minister bold enough to go on air and call for a boycott of a named commercial organisation.

But, with some justification, that is what Digital Minister Margot James did this week. ‘Don’t choose Viagogo,’ she counselled listeners of Radio 5Live. ‘They are the worst.’

For those unfamiliar with the name, this is a Geneva-based firm which snaps up thousands of tickets for pop concerts and sports events then sells them at inflated prices to people who failed to secure tickets from the original supplier.

Often the reason for this failure was that outfits operating as online touts got in first.

It is a firm which has told customers the face value of the tickets it has for sale is greater than it really is, then it screws yet more money out of them by revealing the full price which must be paid only at the last moment in online transactions. That is a breach of advertising rules.

Flustered

Pressure tactics are employed too. Flustered customers are cajoled into paying as fast as their keyboard fingers can carry them into the deal because, inevitably, there are only a handful of tickets left.

A digital counter shows how many others are eyeing the exact same tickets right now. Hurry, then, or they’ll get in before you. It is all very unedifying.

And mystifying too. The company’s unscrupulous methods are clear for all to see. It is a parasite, feeding off us and feeding off celebrity and making everyone feel the worse for it. Why does it take a Government minister to tell people to steer clear?

I can suggest two reasons. And neither, I’m afraid, reflects very well on us.

The first is because we believe they are worth it – not Viagogo, but the showbiz royalty lurking beyond the sharks fleecing us for the privilege of an audience with them.

If £240 is what must be paid to watch Taylor Swift perform then so it must be. The alternative in many family homes would be heartbreak, floods of tears, slammed bedroom doors and the inescapable verdict that life is too cruel.

Avoiding all this may be worth £240 to some, though some time spent on gaining a little perspective may be a better investment.

Really – and I say this as a huge fan of live music – does witnessing any pop star trundle through their hits on a stage far, far away matter so very much?

Apparently so. If a week’s wages must disappear on the Rolling Stones, who play Edinburgh’s Murrayfield next Saturday, well, it is the Rolling Stones, goes the chatter in alarming numbers of households. And besides, this could be the last time...

Yes, they were saying that 15 years ago when I paid £100 to see them in Glasgow. They were saying that at the start of the 1980s when they last recorded music of any interest.

And, ten years before that, when the Stones playing live really were a sight to behold, people would have thought you were crazy or at least on mind-altering substances if you had even joked about blowing a week’s wages on a rock concert. Tickets then were the price of a night out, not a family holiday.

It is a strange logic indeed which dictates that, decades after a band’s peak, we should pay many times more than we did during its pomp to find out if it still has anything left in the tank.

Viagogo, to be fair, are not the architects of this bizarre logic – we are. They are simply the ones profiting from it.

Or perhaps you prefer the second reason why, like krill making for that big, gaping thing in the water, we allow ourselves to be hoovered up by bloated beasts of the web with their own interests, never ours, at heart.

It is because we are resigned to poor service. So expecting are we of disappointment that our behaviour as consumers is almost that of the Stockholm syndrome victim sticking with – even, at times, sticking up for – our abusive captors.

This week the annual Consumer Action Monitor Scotland reported 12.7million problems with products and services offered to Scots during 2017. Yet the number of complaints taken up with the companies responsible numbered just 4.6million – little more than a third of the total.

What happened to the remainder? Ah well, said 26 per cent of respondents, you only get anywhere if you are prepared to kick up a huge fuss, and who has the time? Besides, said another 24 per cent, we complained last time and nothing happened.

Complaint

Rather than make a formal complaint, 23 per cent felt the way forward was to spend less money with the firm in future. Only one excuse for not complaining showed any spirit – 41 per cent did not report their dissatisfaction because they were too busy walking away after refusing to part with their money.

Sure, Miss James was right to urge a boycott of the ghastly Viagogo but surely, too, we must be figuring out this stuff for ourselves.

We need to get better at withholding our custom. We need to storm off, heads held high, in sufficient numbers to leave unscrupulous operators with a choice – make it right or die.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to leave my energy provider. They have had it coming.