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AIBU?

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Original poster

To think I should be entitled to my money back?

114 replies

hooveringhamabeads · 09/12/2018 22:25

I took my daughter and her friend to an event yesterday. A couple of days before the event I decided that I would go with her as she was anxious about going without me. By this point tickets had sold out, so I bought one on a site for buying and selling event tickets.

I was a bit worried about this, as the system is that the seller uploads their emailed ticket, and then upon payment the buyer is emailed the ticket by site (not the seller directly). It did occur to me that there was nothing to stop people from doing this, but still attending the event themselves, but just making sure they got there really early so they were still likely to be the first one to use the ticket. Tickets are scanned when you get there and obviously each barcode can only be used once.

We got to the front of the queue yesterday at the event, and I gave the security man the three tickets. He scanned the one I’d recently bought first, and the scanner made a no sound. At the moment, the man got distracted by something his colleague said to him, and then he turned back to the scanner and looked confused and said “have you already been in and come out again”. I said no and he said “oh, I must have done something wrong there”, then scanned my other tickets and let us in.

I could tell from the noise the scanner made that the first ticket had already been used. I got an email today from the site I bought it from asking if everything had been ok with it, and I chose the ‘no’ option. I then had to fill out a form where I honestly said what had happened, but that we still got into the event.

The seller messaged me back to say he was sorry, but he had uploaded the wrong ticket to the site, and used the one he’d uploaded by mistake. Now this is possible, but on the other hand he could have been planning to scam me all along.

AIBU to think I should be entitled to get my money back, as what I bought was a valid ticket to the event, but that’s not what I received? I’m not sure how far I’ll get as I’ve already told the site I still got in, but that was a complete fluke.

Sorry that was long 😂

OP posts:
dippledorus · 10/12/2018 11:05

If you get a refund, you're £50 better off. How can you morally ask for a refund of that money when you got entry to the event? And there's no way to make it right because if they take the money off the seller, you got entry so he's paying and you got in for free. Why is that fair?

I would be inclined to chalk it up and let it go.

SpamChaudFroid · 10/12/2018 11:05

I bet you weren't the only person who that ticket was re-sold to. I'd ask the seller for a refund myself.

dinosaurglitterrepublic · 10/12/2018 11:10

Utterly amazed by the responses on here!!! He sold you a ticket, it was not a ticket you could use to get into the event and had already been used by someone else. You are entitled to a refund. This is the exact reason secondary selling sites don’t pay until after the event. He could have made a genuine mistake, he could be a scammer. Who cares? You didn’t get what you paid for.

As for those saying you got in anyway... yeah I often like to pay full price to attend an event to suffer the humiliation of being initially denied entry and having to fill out a special form to gain access. You are lucky you got in anyway, it was nothing to do with the seller.

For those saying she shouldn’t ask for a refund, please feel free to message me your contact details. I have some stuff you might want to buy.

greendale17 · 10/12/2018 11:13

**I'm in the refund camp because the seller was in breach of contract. How the venue responded to it is basically irrelevant.

Also, it wasn't a mistake. I suspect he probably sold that ticket several times.**

^I agree. Am surprised at how naive people are thinking this was a genuine mistake from the seller. It wasn’t and is a well known scam.

DisrespectfulAdultFemale · 10/12/2018 11:14

You are not entitled to anything: you got in.

SoupDragon · 10/12/2018 11:15

You didn’t get what you paid for.

She did, she got into the event

As for those saying you got in anyway... yeah I often like to pay full price to attend an event to suffer the humiliation of being initially denied entry and having to fill out a special form to gain access.

None of which happened at all. The ticket was scanned, the staff member assumed it was their mistake, she went in. Where was all this humiliation?

SoupDragon · 10/12/2018 11:16

Am surprised at how naive people are thinking this was a genuine mistake from the seller.

I'm not naive. Given she got in with no hassle I'm simply of the belief that there's nothing to claim and no reason not to give the benefit of the doubt. Had she not got in, my thoughts would be completely different.

dippledorus · 10/12/2018 11:18

The OP chose to use that ticket site. If it's such a well known scam then she shouldn't be buying second hand resold tickets, and it's for the site she used to pursue and tighten up their processes.

The OP suffered no loss.

hiptobeasquare · 10/12/2018 11:22

The seller is probably a scammer, but the OP will have to argue how she has suffered a breach of contract. She got into the event.

skybluee · 10/12/2018 11:26

This is ridiculous, wouldn't you just be happy you got in?

dinosaurglitterrepublic · 10/12/2018 11:31

None of which happened at all. The ticket was scanned, the staff member assumed it was their mistake, she went in. Where was all this humiliation?

True enough, my mistake misread it as she had to fill in a form there. Lack of sleep, doh. But the point remains, the seller didn’t provide a ticket that provided access.

And it IS such a well known scam in secondary ticket sites. It is exactly why they are set up the way there are and the check that the buyer could get in before they pay. This is precisely the situation they form their processes around.

WhatToDoAboutWailmerGoneRogue · 10/12/2018 11:32

spent a long time reading through everything on there to make sure I was buying a legitimate ticket, which the site assured me I was.

Don’t be silly, OP. Nobody is naive enough to think that a ticket bought off a website where you don’t actually even get the physical ticket is a legitimate ticket.

And that’s even leaving out that it’s a well known fact that tickets cannot be bought and resold on other websites.

JudgeRindersMinder · 10/12/2018 11:33

Only ask for a refund if you intend passing it on the venue, as in getting a refund you got something for nothing., but I don’t hink you intend doing that do you?

Eliza9917 · 10/12/2018 11:35

I think you should make a thing of it with the company because he could do this again in the future and the buyer not be so lucky. He needs to be banned from selling on the site.

TheyBuiltThePyramids · 10/12/2018 11:36

I sold tickets for an event via ViaGoGo last month where I uploaded the tickets. I was not paid for the tickets until the buyer confirmed that they got into the event OK. So I doubt it was a scam - if you hadn't been able to enter, the vendor would not have been paid and you could have claimed back the money. As it is - you got in and no harm was done.

Johnnycomelately1 · 10/12/2018 11:47

Don’t be silly, OP. Nobody is naive enough to think that a ticket bought off a website where you don’t actually even get the physical ticket is a legitimate ticket.

Not really. I buy tickets all the time where you don't get a physical ticket- you just print it out on A4 (like a boarding pass) and once the code has been scanned once, it cant be scanned again. Now theoretically, a lot of these tickets are non-transferrable but that's not to say that there's no legitimate second hand market in them.

Original poster
hooveringhamabeads · 10/12/2018 11:49

No, at no point was I planning on letting them go to the gig and stay in a hotel alone. Once again, original plan was to go with them all the way to the door, make sure they got in ok, wait and be there when the gig ended. But then dd got worried about me not being there so I bought another ticket.

OP posts:
itsbetterwithoutyou · 10/12/2018 11:52

How nice of the OP to call everyone who doesn't agree with her 'thick' Hmm

If you are that bothered OP do as a pp has suggested go to CAB and get proper legal advice instead of asking random 'thick' people off the internet.

DontCallMeCharlotte · 10/12/2018 11:54

My colleague has sold tickets on Viagogo once - she's definitely not a scammer, she just couldn't make the concert. However, three friends and I could not get tickets for a major international event, despite pre-registering and getting online the minute the event went on sale. We were 72,000th in the queue and the venue only held about 18,000 people. We bought tickets the next day off Viagogo. Not a scammer but yes a tout as they clearly had no intention of ever going to the event themselves. Yes, they were over face value but they were worth every penny and we were prepared to pay.

arethereanyleftatall

the venue has (possibly) lost out. It sold one ticket. Which was (possibly) used twice.

The venue has not lost out. Assuming the seller is genuine, at least two tickets were sold and one of them wasn't used. You can only have one bum on a seat at a time!

NO ONE HAS LOST OUT!

Calvinsmam · 10/12/2018 11:55

I think Op is getting a bit of a hard time here.
I can see her point, and she never said that she was going to let her dd and friend stay in a hotel on her own.
I’d just chalk it up personally but I can see her point.

I sometimes buy tickets off those sites when gifs are sold out and they are usually fine. You know there’s an element of risk though.

But you can’t prove it was a scam and you still got into the event.

dippledorus · 10/12/2018 11:58

Many gigs, the t&Cs state the tickets were non transferable.

Was that the case for this ticket OP?

weewillywinkie · 10/12/2018 12:02

Would you even get a refund though? What do the T&Cs of the site say?

Original poster
hooveringhamabeads · 10/12/2018 12:03

It didn’t say anything in the event T&Cs about tickets being non transferable, and when I read through the stuff on the ticket site it said the reason it didn’t matter which name was on the ticket was that it’s always the name of the person who books them, rather than who is using them. So for example on the tickets I originally bought, my name was on both of them, but clearly I wasn’t going to be going in twice. If I’d bought 10 tickets for a group of friends, they would all have my name on them if I’d been the one to book them.

OP posts:
Original poster
hooveringhamabeads · 10/12/2018 12:06

These are the relevant bits that I found in the T&Cs on Ticketswap.

To think I should be entitled to my money back?
To think I should be entitled to my money back?
OP posts:
2018Already · 10/12/2018 12:07

The ticket you received had already been used, so by the time you came to enter, your ticket was invalid. If you hadn’t got in (by luck / chance) you would have been eligible for a refund from the seller. So technically you’re eligible for a refund. Whether you want to press it or not is up to you, but you were lucky as you were sold a dud.
As per usual with Mumsnet I don’t know where the brains are with 75% of the people on this thread.