Ticket bother tout of order

I’M HEARING all sorts of horror stories about the problems people are having buying tickets for gigs and sporting events.

It seems that tickets sell out in minutes, only to appear on “secondary” sites at many times the original price.

It’s a form of touting which, at the moment, is an offence in Scotland under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, although it’s only enforceable if there is an element of “annoyance” involved.

When we mention touting, we tend to think of people standing outside venues waving tickets at us half an hour before a concert or match starts.

But these days, most of the touting happens online and that’s why it’s so difficult to monitor.

It’s a huge issue and one that won’t go away until legislation is brought in to control re-sale.

The politicians are talking about it and, in fact, the House of Commons issued a briefing paper at the end of last year looking at the issue and containing the highlights of a report from Professor Michael Waterson of Warwick University looking at how consumers are protected at the moment.

There is no question that changes need to be introduced to the way tickets are sold.

But until that happens, perhaps we need to go back to the old days when you had to go to a ticket office to collect your tickets in person.

Or when you turn up at the venue, you need to produce the card that you used to buy the tickets in the first place.