Petition against Ticket Touting

It's been a sad first day for Morrissey ticket sales and I'm sure that feeling is also shared by many other people too. What should have been a day of excitement at Morrissey's London Palladium concert tickets going on sale has instead been marred by the actions of many ticket agencies, ticket touts and Ebay.

We were told that the tickets were going on sale at 9am this morning. I tried the Ticketmaster phone line at 8.55am and managed to get through to an automated ticket purchasing system and it selected 2 tickets for me in row N for May 21st. The next time I managed to get through was at 9.10am and all seats were sold on Ticketmaster. I also tried in vain to get through using the internet to gigsandtours.com, seetickets.com and both of those sites were down from 9am onwards. I believe seetickets did release some tickets later in the day but they too went very quickly.

Several people managed to get stalls seats via seetickets but when it got to the point of entering credit card details and pressing submit, the page crashed. gigsandtours did eventually bring up tickets for several people but just said it would automatically allocate the best available seats and did not indicate as to what row the seats were in before purchase so many people canceled at that point. I believe that may be a practice that could be considered to be illegal because consumers are supposed to be clearly told what seat numbers they are purchasing; I believe that is covered under the Consumer Act.

By 9.30am there were more than 30 tickets for sale on Ebay going for large sums of money such as 2 tickets in row N for £299. The number of tickets appearing on Ebay has increased throughout the day and is now into several hundred with individual touts on there selling 70+ tickets each.

Also getmetickets.net has listed several Morrissey gigs including ones that have not yet gone on sale and requesting sums like £277 for a 5th row stalls seat.

1) Why at 8.55am were the majority of tickets already sold out, the majority of which seem to have gone to ticket touts ?

2) Why do tickets for all 3 dates go on sale on the same day if the phone lines and computer systems are not able to handle the load without crashing or having some sort of phone queuing system ? If the systems are not able to handle the load for 3 dates how is this going to affect the sales when the remaining tickets go on sale?

3) And most importantly is the issue of ticket touts. Ticket touting is illegal in Scotland but is not in England but it is a practice that is supposed to be outlawed by all the reputable ticket agencies. Why in that case are these ticket agencies allowing the vast majority of tickets to be sold in advance of the public sale time to individuals who are so obviously touts and ticket agencies ? Even when seetickets were questioned this afternoon about an individual who almost immediately put for sale the tickets they had purchased and quoted their seetickets booking reference number in their Ebay advert seetickets said that there was nothing that they could do. Why is that if ticket touting is something that they do not condone?

4) Why is Ebay condoning this practice? Ebay is allowing hundreds of tickets to be put up for sale on their web site? I do note that there are some touts who are located in Scotland. This is therefore an illegal practice and Ebay are participating in this criminal act because the action is taking place in a location where touting is very clearly illegal. Also there are several ads on Ebay that do not specify the row the seats are in; they vaguely say rows A to M etc. This is actually illegal and against the resale of tickets legislation; all ticket resales have to clearly state what the face value price was and what the seat row/numbers are.

What can we do?

It may well be too late for us all to get tickets now but the aim of this petition is to raise our disgust with the relevant agencies and it attempts to prevent the ticket touts from profiting in the hope that this will mean that future ticket sales will not be targeted by this action.

I realise that we all want to go to see Morrissey but we need to try to restrain from purchasing these tickets on Ebay because if we do buy them now then the same thing will happen for the Manchester dates and indeed all of the dates. If we refuse to buy the tickets now then it should have 2 effects, the first being the fact that they will not be so keen to block purchase seats at the other events leaving more tickets for the people who want to purchase them at face value, and also it will have the effect of forcing the touts to lower their prices and then the tickets will be available to us nearer the time for face value or less.

During Live 8 pressure was put on Ebay and Ebay eventually agreed to remove all tickets from their web site. I hope that similar pressure can be put on Ebay to persuade them to stop allowing this activity to take place on their site and in the case of the Scottish touts, illegal activity.

Please show your support for this petition by registering on this message board and replying to this message. Please keep your post relevant; any non relevant or silly replies will not support the case that we are putting forward and will not make Ebay, the touts or the agencies stand up and take note. Any such posts will be removed. If you don't want to write very much thats fine; the main point is to show support so a reply that just contains your name and home town is just as valid. It will also help if you can take the time to register on the board before adding your reply so that your email address etc is validated and therefore will have more weight in the petition as a valid reply.

Also if you have the time I suggest you also phone and write to the agencies and Ebay expressing your views. Another idea if you have time is to go through the Ebay items and report any tickets that do not specify the exact row, or tickets that are located in Scotland by following the Ebay reporting non compliant items procedure as both of these types of items are illegal.

My main aim is to try to ensure that we all get tickets at some point by driving down the prices of the existing tout tickets and hopefully reducing the appeal of touting by this action thus giving us all a better chance of getting tickets at subsequent sales. Also to bring our dismay to the attention of Ebay and the agencies.

Thank you for your time and support and I hope everybody has more success in getting tickets next time. I am sure Morrissey would prefer to be on a stage in front of people who really want to hear and see him, people who have not been forced to pay obscene amounts of money by people whose main concern is a quick buck, and to feel the warmth of all fans in front of him, not just those who are willing to spend £200 to get a ticket.

This will continue to happen as long as YOU allow it to happen. We have a choice, stop it now by not buying off Ebay and then these people will learn that Morrissey fans can not be bought. Let's make Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow special by allowing all fans the same opportunity to see him, not just people who are willing to spend £200+ per ticket. You can make this happen, we can make this happen, let's make it happen.

I think something has to be done about this situation as a matter of urgency. These practices are unfair and touts should be ashamed of themselves.

It would be a fairly easy situation to fix if the agencies just put there minds to it. Why not have a similar system to airline tickets where the name is printed on the ticket and ticket has to be accompanied by id on the night?

I suspect the ticket agencies have no integrity though and that they would ot be willing to make any effort whatsoever to fix the problem. As long as they get their profit they won't care who gets the tickets. It really should be pushed by artists and the record companies. If they pressurise the ticket agencies then things would have to change or they could sell the tickets to only agencies who comply with changes such as id checks. Limp replies that have been received from Sanctuary records saying that it is not their responsibilty "talk to the ticket agencies" show a lack of respect to the people who are buying the music and their attitude also stinks.

Paul Wilcox from Rochester

Keith Douglas from Ipswich

Paul Scalpy from London

Something needs to be done. It is not fair. It is this kind of crap that is destroying the music business and society in general.

Forget your wallet

Don't buy off ebay. If we all stick to that then they won't do it for Manchester dates.

As long as you buy them they will continue to do it so buy them and you have no reason to complain. Please don't

I shan't buy a ticket from a tout -- but there will always be some fool.
Absurd bidding might help, but would that give us bad ebay credit?

Can any one suggest tactics to be used against these ebayers?

How about creating ebay accounts with false addresses to work from -- is that practical.

Also, maybe bombard Julia's site, true-to-you now she's become Mozzer's mouthpiece.

Anyone got addresses of Morrisseyworld people? This has happened before and Morrissey's people should take an interest.

Bill

v cross, actually

Thanks for taking the time to put your point across, totally agree with everything.

And I know it might be tempting for some people to now buy a ticket off ebay, as the might be coming down in price slightly already, and it may look like they're selling fast having so many bids on them, but I bet you, it's just themselves and their friends bidding, to make people panic. The same sales will appear again and again, so it's not as if they're being sold to fans, so DO NOT buy them. IF you count them up there are hundreds of tickets there and with the agencies, so there will be tickets for all of us I'm sure.

Elina

Totally agree with everything said. Ticket touts should be ignored at all costs, don`t line their pockets with your hard earned cash.
M Williams

John Davies from Hackney London

I couldn't agree more, esp that no-one should buy from ebay, then hopefully these greedy people will think next time

Jay Collard

Suffered loss of allocated seats due seetickets crash ... obviously very disappointed but will not be tempted by ebay touts.

John Richardson, London

Appalling fiasco. Does not bode well for trying to legitimately purchase a couple of tickets for the regional dates on Friday 27th. Fan for 22 years and can't get a ticket for London. Would not buy from a tout, even for a full Smiths reunion. Touts are the scum of the earth. One must have some principles.

It's an absolute nightmare situation, non of the other gig venues have even got mozza on their forthcoming events listings, so trying for Birmingham or Manchester I reckon will be just as difficult.

Jan Thompson from Chorley, Lancs.

I won't be buying tickets from e-bay but desperate to get tickets for Manchester. Let's see what happens when they go on sale next Friday. Not holding out much hope though!!!

Peter Jenkins from London

I was due to go off traveling for a couple of months at the beginning of May and I put it on hold so I could get to see Morrissey. I would normally try to get to as many of the gigs as possible and would normally queue to get to the front of a standing venue. I was unable to get any tickets for London. Something has happened with me because of all this and I don't feel that sense of excitement about this tour like I normally would. I will try for tickets again on Friday but if the same thing happens then I really for the first time will not be interested and will go traveling as planned. Something has gone very wrong and it all just seems to have been taken over by the worst possible capitalist ideals that Morrissey to me was not a part of all those years ago. This behaviour by these touts and the agencies has taken away that buzz fro me and I fear for me that light may well be going out.