Wake me up before you Viagogo

Listen to today's Consumerwatch topic below, or read the details under the podcast. 

And if you don’t check out the site carefully, you won’t realise that you’ve landed on an online marketplace for the reselling of tickets.

Founded in London in 2006 and now based in Switzerland, Viagogo has a network of more than 60 global websites, with customers in 160 countries.

On its website, this is how it explains how it works: “Viagogo aims to provide buyers with the widest possible choice of tickets to events, and enables sellers to reach a global audience.

“Once buyer and seller have entered into a transaction, viagogo ensures everything goes smoothly. Viagogo is not the ticket seller and all transactions are between the buyers and sellers.”

So this is how a “fan to fan” ticket selling platform is supposed to work - a fan buys two tickets for a big rugby match, for example, and falls ill or no longer wants to go for some reason, so puts the tickets up for sale on the site. 

But it’s claimed that many of the sellers on the Viagogo site are in fact not fans, but Viagogo itself acting as a modern-day, highly-sophisticated tout, having made backroom deals with promoters, scooped up a whack of tickets before the real fans could buy them, and then selling them at massively inflated prices.

But the stars are starting to push back against reseller platforms, and Viagogo in particular.

Fans who bought Viagogo tickets to Ed Sheeran’s concerts in Manchester this week are being told they’re invalid and asked to buy new face-value tickets at 80 pounds.

Naturally, that’s not going down well with them, but Sheeran's tour promoters did warn fans in July last year that if they bought "unauthorised" Viagogo tickets they would not be allowed entry to the concerts, and ultimately he’s doing it for the benefit of his fans.

“I hate the idea of people paying more than face value for tickets when you can get them at face value,” he’s been quoted as saying.

And of course it happens with tickets for major sporting events.

Peter Jewell recently bought three tickets through Viagogo for a rugby match in Durban, paying R850 for 3 tickets.

He went on to buy four tickets, two of them for scholars, for just R300 from Ticketpro.

“If you google ‘ticket rip-off’, it appears that Viagogo is under investigation in New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain,” he said. "I discovered this too late.”

That’s true.

It’s a highly controversial operation, facing legal and regulatory challenges in many countries.

Just this week, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority found that Viagogo had contravened that country’s advertising rules because its quoted prices did not make clear upfront the additional fees and charges consumers were required to pay to order tickets.

New Zealand’s Commerce Commission has been warning consumers not to buy tickets on Viagogo for some time. Two months ago, it intensified its awareness campaign after getting a rash of complaints from people who’d bought tickets to several concerts, including Celine Dion, Ed Sheeran, and Bruno Mars.

Complaints such as:

 - Viagogo making out that they were the official ticket seller not a reselling website;

 - Additional fees not being adequately disclosed; and

- Consumers purchasing tickets that do not have the seating, access or other attributes that were advertised.

“We suspect consumers type the name of the artist they want to see into a search engine and then click the first result that appears – which is often Viagogo,” said the commission's consumer manager Stuart Wallace.

And that’s what many South Africans appear to be doing, too.

Admittedly, across the top of the SA Viagogo site the following appears: “We're the world’s largest secondary marketplace for tickets to live events. All tickets are fully protected by our guarantee. Prices are set by sellers and may be below or above face value.”

What should also be there, in my opinion, is something along the lines of, “additional fees and charges apply”.

I checked out the Viagogo tickets prices for the Springboks vs England game at Newlands on June 23, choosing two good ones, at R890 each. And only when I’d gone through the whole process did the extras pop up: a booking fee of R282 and a delivery fee of R168 - each  - taking that R890 price up to R1340.

David Preutz went online to try and find tickets for that match in February and landed up on the Viagogo site, which was offering tickets before anyone else had them listed. He chose tickets based on the stadium layout map,  and was very specific in asking for lower tier and in particular blocks between the 22 meter lines. The tickets he got were a block back and right on the try line - nowhere near what he had asked and paid for.

Viagogo has simply refused to acknowledge the tickets are incorrect and will only respond with "they’re valid".

WHAT TO DO:

Do your homework when online to avoid being ripped off -  know who you are dealing with.

And if you want to go ahead and buy from a reseller site because you can’t get tickets elsewhere, check out the face value of the tickets before you start shopping, and bear in mind that the price you see will be swelled by those extra fees.

Viagogo itself warns that: “Customers will often find multiple sets of tickets for the same section at different prices. Ticket sellers compete to offer the best price to customers.”

Finally - check that the currency is Rand before you make that final click.

For more info and consumer advice, follow Wendy Knowler on Facebook here, or visit her website.