Buying Festival Tickets Guide

Another alternative is to buy tickets off ebay. If ou do decide on this option you have to make sure you know all of the risks so that you can make an informed choice, so here’s a bit of blurb about ebay and tickets.

The ‘grey’ market for a product develops because of problems of supply and demand in the primary market. (If you don’t care about this crap, feel free to skip to the next paragraph). Because the supply of tickets for music festivals is limited due to capacity – and the demand outstrips supply, a secondary market appears. Under normal market conditions, prices would go up and those willing to pay would do so, but because artists want to keep the prices of the tickets low, the ‘value’ of tickets is always going to be higher then the actual price.

The first thing to remember is that reseling tickets for all music festivals is against the terms and conditions of purchase, and if caught the promoters can cancel the tickets under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999. You have to therefore consider that if you purchase tickets from ebay before the tickets have been printed and sent to purchasers, the promoters may cancel that persons orders and they won’t have the tickets to send to you, you’ll therefore have to then rely on them giving you a refund. Every man and hs dog will no doubt advise against buying tickets from ebay, but thousands of concert tickets are sold on ebay every day and if you check the feedback of the sellers (which I have done) you will see that the vast vast majority of buyers are happy bunnies, becaue of that I’m not going to tell you no to buy tickets from ebay but will tell you to BE CAREFUL (In capital letters for added effect! WOW!). Here’s my top tips for covering your ass if you decide to buy off ebay.

• Don’t buy them as soon as the tickets first sell out: (more about that later) – Too many people go to Ticketmaster, find that their festival has sold out in 4.3 seconds, then go straight to ebay and buy tickets from there. Remember that ‘economics stuff’ a few paragraphs up, well here’s some more. When the tickets first sell out, some folks will put their haul straight onto ebay at the highest price possible. As time goes on, more tickets will appear on ebay, people will be undercutting left right and centre and the prices will go down and down, eventually settling at a level that the market agrees on (in an economic sense of course). Generally festival tickets level out on ebay at about 30-50% above face value, although there are so many factors involved that it’s difficult to be precise. If you buy a ticket from ebay for £200 and a few months later they start selling for £130 you’ll be pretty gutted!

• Check the feedback: Not just the number, that means nothing. Make sure the seller has sold things recently and more importantly make sure they have sold tickets. Check the feedback comments of people who have bought tickets to see what they say. If the seller has never sold anything be very wary, if they have never sold tickets before be quite wary.

• Check the auction details: There are certain laws that need to be adhered to when reseling tickets under the resale of tickets act. The main one is that they have to specify the face value of the ticket. If they don’t specify this in the auction then they obviously don’t know that they are supposed to which doesn’t bode well for their credibility.

• Pay with Paypal using your credit card: Paypal will give you protection up to £500 and for up to 45 days after the end of the auction depending on the status of the seller (You can check the protection level by clicking the Paypal logo on the auction). You should therefore never buy tickets more than 45 days before the event because if you don’t get them you will have very little recourse. Your credit card company will offer you protection against fraud as well, often for longer than 45 days but if a number of months have passd you may have trouble. So like I said before, don’t buy festival tickets off ebay more than 45 days before the festival is on – like I also said before, there is no need, prices on ebay generally go down as the festival approaches and not up (see above) and more tickets will go onsale through the official channels too (see below). Whatever you do, never pay by cheque, bank transfer or cash, Western Union is also a no no.

• Don’t buy off anyone not in the UK: Surely I don’t need to tell you that’s a bad idea!

Filed under: If You Miss Out