Live 8

[shiato storm]

did anyone get a ticket?
have you looked on ebay at the stupid prices people are paying for them? there's one I'm looking at right now going fro £200 and reserve is not met, another is £100,100. oh wait, people must have caught on as tehre's lots of £9999999 etc. bids popping up.
for what is essentially a free ticket people have an aweful lot of cheek! like they're giving their ticket money to charity, yeah right! scum

[Trippledence]

Cheaky, yes. Unfair, yes. And like everythign else that gets stupid bids on ebay. Stupud. If they ger tickets and resell them and someones foolish enough to pay, thats there problem. The max price should really be the cost of the text ?

[shiato storm]

thankfully ebay have broken under pressure after so many fake bids went through. I was planning on a bid at some to jack them up to 999999...etc.
so, now that ebay has broken it clearly means it is a falable system. cue lots of legal battles using this as an example!

[Mike Fishcake]

People that try to make money for themselves off the back of a charity are total scum.

[Skii]

Good move IMHO.

Ticket touting is commonplace on Ebay, but with tickets for a charity event, it's pretty low.

[Mike Fishcake]

An amusing take on this story: http://www.b3ta.com/board/4775181

:-)

[shiato storm]

hehe! cool

[autopilot]

What the big deal? It's just a question of morals, and I doubt many people here can be that moralistic. Nothing Illegal has been done and the only thing that sales of these tickets on eBay would have done is generate even more money for the charities involved. eBay were going to donate the listing and commission fee's, so the higher the price the more money that goes to the charities. If people want to pay that price then that’s their choice and people who really want to go are now being stopped, which I think is also unfair.

There sure is a lot of high horsemanship going on here and i believe most the outcry from the do-gooders was based on jealousy at not winning a ticket and seeing people get some money for free. Quite honestly, if I was to have won one and was offered silly money I would have sold them without a second thought. If you think I am a bad person then you don't know me. At least the tickets would be going to people that really wanted to be there and support the cause even more.

Personally I am very cynical about the whole thing anyway. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it's a giant backslapping and patronizing PR exercise for the bands involved. Yes some good may come out of it (most of the cash never reaches the people intends to help anyway) but there are better ways to support. But it’s a good event all the same and that’s a whole other debate.

Anyway, someone please explain exactly how the ticket sales on eBay would have hurt those poor people in Africa. Do you think they care or even know it’s happening.

Either way, the real winners are eBay. You just can't buy this kind of publicity.

[Mike Fishcake]

If people want to pay that price then that’s their choice and people who really want to go are now being stopped, which I think is also unfair.

No.

The unfair thing is that some people that genuinely want to go aren't able to get tickets for a fair price because someone who has no intention of going is exploiting them.

Basically - If the touts hadn't bought tickets, the people that genuinely want to go to the event would have only had to pay the normal cost. I'm not jealous, I don't want to go to the event, but I hate ticket touts.

There have been times where I've tried to get tickets for a gig and not been able to, yet checked on ebay a mere 30 minutes later and found people selling them with a starting price of four times as much in some cases.

It's selfish, selfish behaviour. They're basically holding real fans to ransom. "You want the tickets? No, you can't buy them from the supplier, I deserve the money". That's crap. It's not enterprising behaviour, it's greed. Pure and simple greed.

[Swafe]

Yeah ticket touts annoy me too...

I remember Reading last year, in one street we counted upwards of 30 trying to 'buy any sell tickets, anybody got any spare tickets?' - If they were actually going to charge slightly more, make a bit for themselves and let people get tickets for a sold out gig I've no problem, but there so extorsionate there just out to rip people off.

I remember going to a gig at the birmingham academy - 8 quid it was to get in, but it was sold out so I thought I'd try a tout - I really wanted to see the band, so I thought something like 15 quid would be fair, lining his pockets and me getting to go and see a gig I really wanted to see.

Anyway, he wanted 40 quid for a ticket, thats 5 times the price , even after the gig was almost over I was like mate, the gigs nearly over, you'll never sell them I just wanna go in and I've only got 20, so he tryed charging me 60 then, saying go to the cashpoint and put your money where your mouth is, times running out as you said and you know you dont want to miss out.

They don't even pay much for them, people with spare tickets often get jack all, at a chillis gig, the tickets were about 40 quid, they would only offer a fiver a ticket tho We had one spare and it was either a fiver or nothing, as we were offering it to people outside the gig for 20, just to get rid of it and get someone cheap entry, but noone wanted it, so we had to let it go for a fiver.

Outside a massive gig, I bet some of them make a grand in a few hours, just so annoying how they can get away with it

[autopilot]

Basically - If the touts hadn't bought tickets, the people that genuinely want to go to the event would have only had to pay the normal cost.

The tickets were not on sale in the first place, they are handed out randomly as a competion prize. I think it's Bod Geldofs system that's at fault and it's very naive to have not expected this to happen.

Like I said, it's a question of morals and opinions. My opinion is that people should be free to do what they want with them. This is capitalism, move to Cuba if you don't like it. It may not be nice and I personally don't like what people have been doing. But i think it's a right people have. As eBay themselves said, it's not only Legal, but it's a fundemental right to be able to sell something you own.

What eBay should have done is disable the 'Buy It Now' Feature and only allow a fair auction.

Ok, as you might know, often the way to find out if something is right or wrong is to take the argument to it's logical extreme. So, the question is - if you have a Live 8 ticket and someone offered you £10,000,000 for a ticket, would your morals still hold firm and turn the offer down? And if you did sell them, would you give it all to charity?

I bet the Daily Mail moral crusaders are having a field day today

[Mike Fishcake]

I actually get the feeling that we both have almost the same opinion but we're putting it over in two different ways

This is capitalism, move to Cuba if you don't like it.

Eeeehhhhh.... come on, you don't have to make daft statements like that. You mention that people should have the right to sell tickets. Where there's capitalism there's generally democracy, which also gives me the right to an opinion without having to emigrate. Besides, it's not just a matter of the two extremes of capitalism or communism, there is socialism and various other political viewpoints in between the two. Anyway, I'm digressing.

So in summary then: Ticket touts are f***ing c***s, but we've just got to live with them anyway :-/

I have a horrible, horrible habit of being able to see all sides of an argument and not being able to come to a satisfactory conclusion. If I have a sleepless night, I will hold you personally responsible

As for the bloody daily mail, they'll probably only report on the story if they catch a homosexual or an asylum seeker selling them.... *sigh*

[autopilot]

Eeeehhhhh.... come on, you don't have to make daft statements like that.

Mike, get with the tongue and cheek dude. You missed my point anyway, it's was that we chose to live in such a system in which we can do nothing about it. Thank god our law (modern, anyway) is based on logic (at least in theory, if not practice) rather than the moral outcry. Not that you should move to Cuba. As you say, we have rights. Right to free speach and right to a free market. I was not trying to say you should not be able to speak your mind. If people did agreed all the time, life would be boring and i would not enjoy skipping work and posting on these forums so much

I think what I am really trying to say is; I think it's more wrong to try and impose our morals on the people selling these tickets legally than it is selling them in the first place. I think it's an important principle to protect peoples legal rights rather then the lefty brigade forcing thier opinions down our throats. No matter if we like it or not. It's legal and it does no harm to anyone, apart from upsetting people that can't go to a gig.

Also, there is a difference between touts and people selling with genuine auctions. If someone puts something at auction at say a starting bid of 99p, then someone bids up £1000 - who is the idiot? No one is forcing anyone to want to pay that much. 'Buy It Now' at stupid prices is simple greed and touting, can't argue with that. But thats the world we live in. I don't think it's right to censor on the basis that we don't like it. What a world that would be.

But another thing i have noted is that most people just seem to be complaining about not getting cheap/free tickets to a gig for themselves. That sounds a little selfish too, as all people are concerned with is thier enjoyment. How many people have you heard moaning "I can't get in to Live 8, how else can I help Africa"?. Have not heard any myself. I can't help but feel there is a bit of hypocrisy involved here.

[Kumagoro]

i cant really blame the people for trying it on. I just wish i would have thought of doing it

[autopilot]

i cant really blame the people for trying it on. I just wish i would have thought of doing it

Now there's honesty!

Actually, I don't understand why the tickets were free in the first place.

[Skii]

This is also the same capitalism that allows rogue traders to extort people out of huge sums of money, taking advantage of unsuspecting single/old people.

Just because it isn't illegal, and done in the name of capitalism, doesn't make it right.

Reminds me there was an enterprising old g*t on the TV a while back, he bought a peerage and with it some ancient land rights to a large plot of countryside land where a whole community of people lived - it cost him a fair bit of cash but he did it for one reason only, each homeowner a week later recieved an invoice for thousands of pounds JUST to cross this land to get home.

Eventually after a lot of stress and numerous legal appearances and court battles, common sense ruled and the government threw the ruling out.