Yes because the security of barcodes and screenshotted tickets were such a huge problem before. Paying customers used to constantly miss out on events because someone else had already gotten in with their ticket. /s
Is it not where you are? Here it’s very questionable to buy online tickets as the person could sell them multiple times.
If it’s coming from Ticketmaster I get it, but don’t they resell tickets themselves as well?
They do. In fact they’ve been caught “reselling” tickets at scalper prices without them ever having been sold a first time.
The entire scalping/resale market arguably shouldn’t exist, instead tickets should be refundable within reason, at which point the organiser can issue and sell new tickets.
I’ve got season tickets and I can’t use them, or I bought concert tickets and have a surgery now.
There’s valid reasons to resell tickets, obviously scalping is different though, that’s doing it for profit. Unless I’m mistaken some places have laws for reselling tickets for more than the price in the ticket, so you can’t even scalp, you can only resell regardless.
How close up to door time should you be able to return it so they have a chance to resell it? 24-48 hours would be fine I think, but what if you’re out of that time frame? Thats why reselling exists.
I lived in a small town with a small theatre.
If you couldn’t make a show, you called it in and they’d try to resell your ticket; if they succeed, you we’re refunded. So there was no “due date/time” but the sooner you asked them to resell, the better your odds.
The entire scalping/resale market arguably shouldn’t exist, instead tickets should be refundable within reason, at which point the organiser can issue and sell new tickets.
I had to think about this for a minute, but this is exactly the way to handle it. Don’t allow direct transfers at all. You don’t get to pick who gets your tickets (and therefore scalping can’t exist.). But you still can refund your tickets (maybe with a SMALL fee) up to a couple hours before the event. I hope we don’t need legislation to say they have to be sold for the same price they were originally offered for. We don’t want an incentive for Ticketmaster to steal people’s tickets when a venue sells out.
Over here we use bar codes and QR codes exclusively and they deliver them through whatever method you want — PDF or image in email, text message, download PDF, you can even take a screenshot of the web page after you’re done paying if you want.
Which I’ve done many times (the screenshot thing) esp for things like movie tickets where I don’t bother with creating an account because I don’t go that often. I look up the movie or event, pick the seats, pay, take a screenshot of the QR code, send it to whoever’s going on Whatsapp, done.
I’m not sure I understand what the problem is. The venue already got their money. Either someone will show up to redeem the seat or they won’t, they don’t care either way. And it’s trivial to make sure the codes can’t be faked and that only the first scanned code gets in.
The fact there’s no way to check you’re not getting scammed has actually led to an almost total disappearance of scalping. The only resales happen only through friends or friend of a friend sort of thing.
Every once in a while there’s some organizer who thinks they’re smart and issue paper tickets and those are pretty much the only times you see tickets scalped online or outside the venue the night of the concert.
Season ticket holders resell their tickets all the time for stuff like hockey games they can’t make it too. As you said it’s paper, there isn’t anything stopping them from copying and selling it or emailing multiple people.
This is why reselling places exist, it creates a history for the seller so you know you aren’t getting scammed.
There is still valid reasons to resell tickets, most are non-returnable, so if the person can’t go anymore, why shouldn’t they try and recoup the cost? Sure “scalping” is gone, but not reselling tickets.
Scalping is usually used to refer to the specific act of reselling for profit, what definition are you using here?
Every sporting event I’ve been to in the past few years is exclusively digital tickets. Even the local amateur women’s soccer team.
I’m using scalping with the obvious definition of gouging profit.
I’m saying scalping is enabled by making tickets hard to counterfeit. You can’t criminalize the act of reselling itself but you can deter it by making it inherently untrustworthy. Reselling should be possible, but it needs to stop short of getting out of hand.
When you create a trustworthy ticket resell market you’re basically creating a hotbed of scalping. If people can reliably find clients for ever-increasing ticket prices, then ticket prices will keep going up. That’s exactly what Ticket Nation & friends have done, and they profit by taking a fat percentage.
I was given a free ticket to an event last night. I did it all using their web page. Their page was very slow and when I finally got to the point where it was supposed to show the ticket, it kept blanking the page right when the bar code would load. Luckily the gentleman at the booth could see it was legitimate and that there was a technical issue, so he printed it out for me.
That monopoly must go.
I’ve seen my last show
It’s really sad because the artists have little to no control over this. It is the venues who are contracted through Ticketmaster.
I remember Pearl Jam suing them for this in the 90s. Unfortunately, Pearl Jam lost and here we are 30 years later still dealing with their monopolistic tactics.
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How the hell would you double dip? They scan you in.
I built a ticketing app for folk festivals 2 decades ago and we had that problem beat even then.
Sure, they can you on, but which patron is the real patron?
Suppose the ticket was supplied as a PDF. Then it is either in the users Downloads directory or in their email. If that PDF is obtained by a malicious actor, it could be resold countless times. You could have 100 “guests” arrive at a venue with a bogus ticket but only the first one gets in, because they were scanned. That first person may not be the legitimate ticket owner.
Now, if your using their app, they usually put an animation over the barcode, and the gate attendants know to look for that. If that animation isn’t there, don’t scan. Pretty simple instructions to give to anyone. And accessing the app likely requires logging in, probably with some form of MFA (though probably SMS), so it gets a lot more difficult to rip off both the legitimate users and Ticketmaster in this way.
I don’t like having to use a specific app for things like this, but “I kinda get it”.
Now, it’d be better if we had a universal standard format for putting secure, validated passes into the native phone app. Perhaps registering your device to your account via their website, then only allowing the ticket to be installed on one device. I’m sure there’d be more to it, im just spitballing.
There you go, assuming the problem is worth the corporation’s time and money to bother solving. The correct answer is to not bother hiring a customer support department and telling people that they’re SOL when stuff goes wrong. The goal is to take in more money than you spend on customer support, so you spend none.
PGP-encrypted email for everyone, problem solved.
Yah, yah, I know…
Actually think this is more about protecting against unscrupulous scalpers selling tickets multiple times.
When you can just email a pdf or print it, nothing stops you from doing it multiple times.
At the end, it’s ticketbastard that has to listen to the people that got scammed. This method forces authentication and secure the chain of custody.
Mfa does make sense here tbh. I’m more upset by their outrageous fees and monopoly.
Change a number. Then when they scan it you claim it’s an error and then you are dealing with a “technology problem”.
AXS does not integrate with google wallet. I put a note in each calendar event which app the tickets are in. At least the Pixel phones now let you put anything in your wallet that is a QR code. I wish it would let us put plain old images in the wallet.
Well if they want people’s data from having their app they should give heavily discounted tickets 👁️👁️👁️🤣🤣🤣🤔🤔🤔🫡🫡🫡🙄🙄🙄
You’re talking about the same company that charges a “convenience” fee for ordering online. Then if you decide to go to buy them in person you charge a “facilities” fee.
Oooh, nah, let’s just do both!
It makes me so mad that there are so many artists I cannot see because they only offer tickets through this scam. Billy Joel has been a lifelong bucket list artist, and I can’t go see his tour because of this bullshit.
Oh well, I’ll continue going to concerts using tickets sold by the venue.
Haven’t bought anything on Ticketmaster or their owned companies in years. And I generally go to 2 to 5 live shows a month.
This and their policy towards VPNs means I won’t support them.
where do you buy your tickets?
Directly from many venues. And some ticket sellers that aren’t owned by them. Some smaller venues use them, and some artsier places.
But for the mega concerts, I just don’t go where Ticketmaster holds the venue contract. I fly and see who I want elsewhere.
When I have a concert I usually install the app, load the ticket into my mobile wallet, and delete the app
Hell I have the app on my phone, but yesterday, I received a ticket for an event, accepted it, and downloaded it to my phone without using that app at all.
I think OP is misunderstanding what is happening. The code changes every so often, probably to prevent people from passing around a screen shot and trying to get in that way. You can get the ticket without the app.
You can add it to your own mobile wallet as well.
I’d ask for a refund
Just do Will Call. This is to mitigate scalping, everyone should be in favor.
Will call usually has 2 people at the window and 200 people in line. Lol. You think Ticketmaster wants you using willcall?
And scalping still exists, only it’s Ticketmaster doing it now.
There’s a downside to everything but you just gotya put on your big boy undies and checks notes wait in a line.
You also can’t do shit with their service, app and web, if you’re on a VPN. It just refuses. Even – and this may be illegal – unsubscribing from their emails.
I’ve never bought a ticket on ticket master or anywhere else in my life. I just don’t ever go to things that require tickets 😂
You sound boring
There are many other ways in life where you can have fun without getting fucked sideways by a corporation. But you do you, but make sure you keep complaining about it on social media while you keep letting them do that, though. That’ll teach them a lesson :)
Well, you’re also then leaving the bands you love hung out to dry.
No one is fuckin happy about it. I don’t like record labels and their practices either, but you have to end up supporting them when you support the artists. Capitalism is the problem. And it’s pervasive. The Ticketmaster problem is also present in ISPs and cell phone companies. Did you forego giving money to both of those industries to make this comment?
Bands have enough money and influence to do something about it instead of leaving us the helpless peasants fight for their livelihood. And comparing essential utilities to tickets isn’t a good one, my friend. Also, with ISPs and cellphone companies, we actually have plenty of options.
I’m talking about the arrangement of how companies have worked since the deregulation 80s. Multiple huge bands have tried to change the monopoly Ticketmaster/livenation hold in the industry. And most bands that aren’t global phenomena are beholden to their record labels, who are beholden to Ticketmaster. Blaming the bands is pretty shitty. They’re about as powerless as we are, honestly.
Also, ISPs famously have divided the country up and all collectively decided to stay out of each other’s territories for the most part—and they are all running on OUR lines that are public. They supply the “last mile,” but we are still paying them to allow us access to our own infrastructure.
I’m just saying, there are so many examples of this. Airlines are the same. Greyhound busses. Trains. Search engines. Google. Credit reporting agencies. Big movie studios. Capitalism is beyond fucked up. Ticketmaster is one small part, and their lobbying power keeps their control. I buy plenty of tickets through smaller distributors like Dice. These are all pretty similar situations. Money = power, and the more power you have, the more power you have, on and on until you control whatever it is.
You technically have some choice, but your route, your band, your internet, your cell phone carrier, your search engines…a lot of them have pretty much cornered a huge share of the market through power brokering/lobbying/VCs funding them. Look at ride shares. VCs drove the price down by operating at a loss for like a decade+. And now that they took over the market, they have all the power.
Your problem isn’t with the bands trying to make a living. It’s with capitalism.
So your solution to this is never see any band or comedian or race or sporting event or anything that you have to buy tickets for?
Lmaoooo
For me personally, yes, that’s a solution, but for me only, people can do whatever they want. I’m not responsible for the artists’/comedians’ fights. If they’re ok with it, then why should I care?
In US, bought a ticket for event in UK online. Can’t download app in US. (Tickermaster UK) Have to use browser. Hope I have connectivity!
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IOS link?
iOS in the US doesn’t allow sideload.
