Nature Is Healing, Live Music Has Returned And Viagogo Is Back On Its Bullshit
A woman recently paid over $1400 for four tickets to The Cat Empire through the site.
Nature is healing, live music and events are back and unfortunately, that means infamous scammers Viagogo are back again.
We’ve covered Viagogo countless times before, and the ticket-reselling company even got slapped with a $7 million fine last year for making false or misleading representations when selling tickets, but in news that is surprisingly not shocking, the Switzerland-based company is well and truly back on its bullshit.
According to The Age, one woman named Rose lost $1400 after buying tickets to an upcoming The Cat Empire gig in Melbourne. Rose spent $1426 on four tickets — including an $85 booking fee per ticket — to the sold-out final tour. However, the tickets never even arrived in her inbox.
After being informed by the venue that the tickets were fraudulent, she contacted Viagogo, only to be told that her only option was to re-sell the non-existent tickets.
“There’s nothing to sell,” she told The Age. “The tickets don’t exist and reselling them would be ripping someone else off and an insult to the music industry, which doesn’t receive the extra money.”
However, Viagogo told The Age that Rose’s tickets — which she claims she never received — are legitimate. “All our customers are protected by the Viagogo guarantee, which ensures all buyers receive valid tickets in time for the event and in the extremely rare case of a problem Viagogo steps in to find comparable replacements or offer a full refund,” a spokesman said.
Director of campaigns at Choice told The Age that we need national laws to combat ticket scalping from the lines of Viagogo — which has received thousands of complaints via the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in recent years.
“Currently we have a patchwork of different legal protections against unfair ticket scalping across states,” Turner said. “Unless the federal government acts it is going to get worse. People are starting to book events and starting to feel comfortable going out [after COVID-19 restrictions]. Over summer, we are going to see a lot more issues with ticket scalping and bad behaviour.”
It cannot be stressed enough that you should only ever buy your tickets to events via an authorised seller. This may be Ticketmaster, Ticketek, Moshtix or a number of other legitimate ticket sellers, but it is always worth checking on the official event to see which seller is responsible.