No guarantees on resold tickets

Concertgoers concerned about the validity of their tickets this summer are being urged to check the fine print.

If it was bought from an authorised agent, there should be no problems. But buying from a ticket reseller can raise concerns.

Although ticket-reselling platforms such as Viagogo and Ticketmaster Resale are legitimate, and it’s not illegal to resell a ticket or use one, some patrons do find themselves unable to gain entry when they arrive at an event.

Sometimes this is because they’ve been sold a fake or duplicate ticket; sometimes it’s because the name on the ticket doesn’t match theirs.

Consumer NZ’S head of research, Jessica Wilson, says getting in the door comes down to the ticket’s terms and conditions.

‘‘In the cases we’ve seen, the tickets that have been sold – often they are fraudulent tickets.

‘‘There are also cases where the person thinks they’re buying an adult’s ticket but bought a child’s ticket. Those are quite common complaints where the event organiser does have legitimate reasons for turning the person away.’’

Wilson said there was often a phrase in the terms and conditions that the organisers did not honour resold tickets.

‘‘The fairness of that is open to debate. But if there’s nothing in the ticket’s terms and conditions and you’ve just got someone else’s name on, there’d be nothing to stop you using that.’’

Finding out those terms and conditions can be a problem.

‘‘We advise people to go to a legitimate ticket agent for the event and look at ticket availability there first, and check the terms and conditions,’’ she said.

Wilson said her organisation had received a number of complaints about difficulties contacting Viagogo to honour its ticket guarantee or get a refund.

But Viagogo maintains that all tickets sold through its website ‘‘are valid’’. The Swiss-based company was responding to a story on Stuff about a Phil Collins fan worried that he might drive 300 kilometres to the concert, only to have his Viagogo-bought ticket rejected.

The company also said it was unable to control the price of tickets sold via its site. ‘‘The tickets sold on Viagogo’s platform are genuine tickets that have been sold on by the original ticket purchaser in good faith,’’ it said.

The Commerce Commission disagrees that Viagogo is capable of guaranteeing its tickets are valid, and argues the website misleads consumers. It wants an injunction on the basis of the Fair Trading Act.

However, Manolo Echave, the head of the New Zealand Promoters Association, believes Viagogo is too easy a target.

He told TVNZ’S Breakfast show that the answer was to allow promoters to break into the ticketing process, in order to provide competition and gain some control over scalpers and backdoor ticket sales.