Over the past week, many people have posted on the eFestivals forums or emailed or telephoned our offices, to let us know of their difficulties in contacting the company and to ask our advise on what they could do.
At V Festival last weekend, people who thought they'd bought tickets from this company and expected to receive them before the festival started were told to meet their agent at the festival site and were given a mobile number to contact that agent. The phone rang and rang and eventually went dead; no one received their tickets. Now much the same thing is happening over tickets for the Reading and Leeds festivals happening this coming weekend.
According to a report by the BBC (here), Islington Council's Trading Standards team is investigating the company, which is registered to a residential address in Islington, north London. A spokesperson for Islington Council told the BBC that: "Trading standards are aware of SOS Master Tickets and are in the process of carrying out an investigation into their activity."
Customers who bought V tickets from SOS were sent an e-mail from the company's managing director, listing a Spanish address, promising refunds and compensation. Their website has been taken down and all phone and fax numbers are unavailable. It looks as though they disappeared into the sunset with people's money, and those people who bought from them should contact their credit card company to try to have the money refunded.
This is just the latest episode where a fake ticketing website has been used to fleece unwary customers who believed they were buying genuine tickets. While there are some so-called reputable secondary ticketing websites who sell on "spare" tickets better known as ticket touting as far as eFestivals are aware none of these secondary ticketing websites are selling tickets they have in their possession and will possibly leave buyers disappointed.
These so-called 'reputable' secondary ticket agents are not necessarily as reputable as they like to claim. Last autumn eFestivals had an email conversation with one of these company's senior managers and they revealed themselves to be in our opinion, at least to some extent, shady operators. While claiming that they didn't list tickets for sale for unannounced events, they were listing for sale day tickets for a festival when those day tickets didn't yet exist which suggests to us that they either list non-existent tickets which they do not know they can supply, or they are in collusion with promoters and have a channel to get first-sale tickets which they claim are secondary tickets and which they sell at vastly inflated prices.
Amusingly, Graham Burns of the Association of Secondary Ticket Agencies (Asta) told the BBC that SOS Master Tickets was a "rip-off" while seemingly forgetting how their 'honest' members operate - in our opinion to the detremental expense of the customer.
This sort of 'legitimate' secondary ticketing operator has no problem selling the likes of V Festival 2009 tickets at a price of £275 or greater when they're still available via official outlets at the face value price of £145 (as is the case today), though at least they do offer a refund if they're not able to supply the ticket they list. But that's of little comfort to any buyer, who will have believed they'd secured tickets to the festival of their choice.
The problem with all secondary ticket outlets is being exacerbated by some unlikely sources. A quick visit to three of the websites which eFestivals considers in the similar marketplace as ourselves (which includes an extremely well-known name) shows all of these sites promoting secondary ticketing outlets, often of unknown validity, via the adverts they carry on their websites and so they are profiting from others misfortune by helping direct people to these unscrupulous ticket sellers.
Unlike some other less scrupulous music &/or festival websites, eFestivals does NOT help these secondary ticketing websites carry out their rip-offs and let-downs by knowingly carrying their adverts.
eFestivals only ever links to the websites of reputable ticket agents that are official ticket outlets for an event, or an event's own box office, meaning that you can have full confidence in the links for tickets on our website (though you do need to take care if buying via a website that a user has posted on our forums).
eFestivals has always been against an anti-touting law, because it will essentially close off the ticketing market from competition. However, with these sorts of rip-offs happening year-on-year, then something does need to be done.
But new laws are not the only answer - this problem can be well addressed by promoters and legitimate ticket agents themselves, through the use of new-ish ticketing technologies which by default make a potential buyer question if the ticket they're being sold will be valid, or via the sort of scheme introduced by Michael Eavis for Glastonbury Festival. Eavis has shown what can be done when a business fully cares about their customers, and surely the time has come for other operators to show a similar integrity.
There is just one outlet which we suggest for the buying or selling of spare tickets - www.scarletmist.com. This enables true music fans to buy and sell tickets at the face value price.
If you've been the victim of a rip-off ticketing company we suggest the following actions:-
1. Call the police; it is theft if your money has been taken and no product delivered.
2. Report the company to Trading Standards.
3. Contact the BBC's watchdog programme (here).
4. Contact the websites' Internet Service Providers as they have obligations to ensure they are not publishing fraudulent and illegal activity.
5. Contact your credit card company. They should be obliged to refund your money under "section 75" of the Consumer Credit Act.