The People’s War Against Ticket Scalpers
The People’s War Against Ticket Scalpers
October 9, 2007: Whilst we live in a society whose business world is based on creating a good or service and then selling it for a profit, when this is a clearly visible layer of profiteering and not hidden by the veneer of corporate facelessness, it’s inciting a righteous wave of anger.
Vast arrays of businesses rely on online transactions, and often this requires a decent amount of goodwill towards the company, particularly as the consumer is trusting you with their details. What happens when this goodwill becomes outright anger and frustration is exactly what’s happening to illegal ticket scalpers, as music organisers and even the people themselves take action.
When Led Zeppelin last month announced their reunion concert in the UK, over 20 million fans crashed the pipex web server in an attempt to buy tickets. Considering this unprecedented level of interest, it’s no surprise that afterwards there was a large swathe of disappointed Zeppelin fans without tickets and a hefty amount of resentment when scalpers started putting the tickets up on Ebay.
“I wish eBay would drop dead and die... I have begged them to take (the tickets) off and they have basically told us to….. So I will do everything I possibly can to ruin their lives" Event Promoter, Harvey Goldsmith told Kerrang Radio
Goldsmith’s attack on the ticket scalpers didn’t stop at just words, in an attempt to curb the wave of scalpers, any tickets purchased under a different named to the credit card they were bought with were being cancelled. “We take a very dim view of this as we want genuine fans to come to the concert” Goldsmith said in a blog post.
There has been trouble in the ticket selling world in Australia when fans of the band, Rage Against The Machine (RATM) were left stranded without tickets as the concert sold out of general admission and prime seating tickets in less then 30 seconds. Whilst this can largely be attributed to the unprecedented level of demand a newly reformed band generates, there is an understandable level of frustration when those fans then see dozens of online auctions for the prized tickets appearing on Ebay.
RATM fans have reacted by attacking the online auctions directly, making bids in the millions when an auction has barely seconds until it closes. The auctions usually run for several days so the multi-million dollar bids right before closing are causing headaches for the unscrupulous scalpers. Whether or not the angry RATM fans can keep up the bombardment until the concert in January remains to be seen, but it’s just one of many instances where the power of social networking communication is being brought to bear on a target.
The real danger resulting from this exchange is for Ebay, which as the world’s most popular online auction site must rely on its reputation to maintain its dominance of the market. No matter how big the fish, if a corporate reputation becomes tarnished enough it can be hit with major damage in the blink of an eye.