Phil Collins Mission tickets on sale: $1500
Organisers of next year’s sold-out Phil Collins Mission concert are warning buyers to be careful after tickets more than 10 times the original value were being on-sold through Viagogo.
Collins will perform on Waitangi Day, February 6, following a gig in Christchurch as part of his world tour Not Dead Yet: Live!
The tickets were sold through Ticketek and the Mission site and snapped up quickly in September. The ticket re-selling site, which has attracted much criticism, has general tickets going from $296, to $1840 for reserved seating tickets.
Similarly, multiple listings on Trade Me are offering Mission Estate Winery tickets in “no reserve” auctions, starting at well above double the original price.
Based on sales this past week, punters are willing to pay at least double the original price, with two $155 General Admission (GA) standing tickets selling for $618. Two other $155 GA tickets had met the seller’s reserve at $455 in an auction ending tomorrow.
Fans willing to travel to Christchurch to see Collins have more options — 10 of 16 auctions online yesterday were for his February 4 concert.
SEL Mission Concert director Garry Craft said they had measures to identify this kind of activity, but so far had not seen any suspicious behaviour.
“We try to identify any particular purchase, by, or on behalf of, Viagogo on the days following when we go on sale.”
He said they issued tickets on October 1, to give them time to “have a look at the history of all the purchases to try to find or identify anything that was bought fraudulently . . . . and then we can take action against it by cancelling those bookings or reversing those booking”.
On their website, they state: “Do not buy from Viagogo”. However, Craft said he supported legislation in certain states in Australia and elsewhere which allowed people to on-sell tickets, should they no longer need them, for no more than 10 per cent profit.
“No one should be allowed to on-sell tickets and profit by them.”
This year’s cancelled Neil Diamond show at the Mission saw about $22,000 worth of transactions believed to have been made with stolen cards — equating to about 160 tickets.
A Commerce Commission spokesman said they had received eight complaints relating to Viagogo and tickets for Phil Collins shows.
“Complaint information does not typically specify a show location so we cannot provide a figure for complaints about the Napier show.”
The commission has received nearly 500 complaints and inquiries about Viagogo during 2018.
In March, the commission issued a public warning, noting it was investigating numerous alleged incidents of fake tickets being sold via Viagogo or the same ticket being sold multiple times.
In August they filed civil proceedings against Viagogo in the High Court, alleging multiple breaches of the Fair Trading Act and seeking a trading injunction.
The company also faces court or enforcement action in Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, the UK and Australia. It has been fined in Italy and sued by Fifa.
Viagogo did not respond to requests for comment.