Ticket issues
Yesterday I made my plans to go Devonshire Park Eastbourne for the tennis tournament this week. I googled Devonshire Park and was directed to Nature Valley who sponsor the tournament.
Several of the days were sold out but there were a few left for the day I wanted to go.
The ticket allocation had been contracted to Viagogo which describes itself as a ticket market place.
The cost of the ticket was a steep £79 but added to this was a delivery fee of £13 and “VAT and convenience fee” of another £28 making £119 in total.
All the work including having to obtain a new password was done by me.
The convenience fee was for secure delivery for which I was paying £13 extra and prompt customer service which I did not need nor experience. Later in the evening an elderly couple arrived at my flat without warning. The lady lived nearby and was hand delivering the ticket.
She apologised that there was no scanned envelope which she would have to send to me but handed over the ticket. I looked at the face value and it was £49.
In re-reading the email from Viagogo confirming the order they explained ticket price was determined by popularity.
There still seems an awful lot that is not transparent here: Are Viagogo working both sides of the street by charging a fee to the sellers?
Why does not Devonshire Park or the LTA deal with tickets as Wimbledon does for its debenture holders ? Why is there is a duplication of the convenience fee and delivery fee?
These agencies are rightly under attack from rock groups for the ticket selling of their events. However it goes much further than music.
I once had to buy tickets for the Wyndhams theatre and was directed to ticketing company that, other than acquire the domain name of Wyndhams, had nothing to do with them. The secondary ticket market requires regulation and a proper code of conduct.
