| Stage Front Tickets |
| Stage Front Tickets Inc Ticket liquidators Resold tickets at double the face value ,Black marketing, Laurel, Maryland |
| 11th of Nov, 2010 by User162038 |
| I purchased 2 tickets for the Dave Metthews Band concert at Madison Square Garden, New york City for the 13th of November from stagefront tickets through plum benefits since ticketmaster did not have any tickets available. Their website quoted me the tickets at $143.00 each which I purchased by credit card. I was also charged 2 X 21.45 service fee as well as $25 delivery fee which was also quoted up front. The total I was charged was $353.90 I received my tickets on 11/11/10 and was shocked to find that the tickets showed a face value of $75 each. Stagefront tickets had charged me almost double the face value of the tickets. Tickets which I should have had for around $150 I had paid around $315 for. On speaking to a customer representative for stagefront I was told that stagefront buys the tickets from ticketmaster in bulk as soon as the tickets are available there and holds them. Thus the common public (like me) do not get access to them. They wait for the demand to rise and then sell them at inflated prices thus creating a secondary market through other companies (In my case ticket liquidators) that further inflate the price. This is tantamount to black marketing. I am shocked that they are doing this openly. I cannot believe that this is not against the law and that they are brazenly touting this as their business model. Reselling tickets at a 10%-20% commission/service charge is one thing but selling them for more than double the original price is CRIMINAL. I bought tickets not from an individual but from a company for more than double the original value (I paid $343 when they tickets cost only $150). How can that be fair and legal?? |
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Hello! I'm an employee of TicketLiquidator responding to the customer above. We're sorry for the customer's unhappiness with the ticket price, but there seems to be some confusion...
Briefly, we at TL are a nationwide network through which licensed companies resell tickets to events. This means we don't actually own, price, nor ship the tickets you see listed for sale on our website. All that responsibility is in the hands of individual ticket sellers who list tickets through us. Typically, these sellers price tickets based on their perception of the event’s popularity. As a result, the prices of tickets sold through our website are usually either above or below their face value. In this case, Stagefront was the company who supplied the customer's order (aka: the seller of the purchase).
On that note, the mark-up in ticket prices on the resale market is designed to cover the numerous expenses incurred by sellers to obtain hard-to-get tickets. To access tickets, these sellers pay face value plus additional fees and/or have fee-paying memberships in special fan clubs and/or sometimes even pay their own mark-up fee by buying tickets from other resellers. The major point of the resale market is both to keep tickets on the market long after primary sources (eg: the venue) are otherwise sold out and also to allow early access to ticket guarantees before the general onsale of tickets for an event.
In this case, the customer appears upset that Stagefront purchased the Dave Mathews tickets from Ticketmaster and then subsequently resold them for a higher price. In reality, though, the vast majority of tickets purchased on Ticketmaster (or from the venue) are not purchased by ticket resellers, but by consumers. (Ticket sellers usually buy up no more than 10% of the inventory listed for sale by the venue -- recalling, too, that event promoters hold back tickets and don't sell them all to the public. Please note there are also basic restrictions put in place by venues to make mass buying -- as envisioned by this customer -- technologically impossible.)
In all actuality, the customer's situation amply illustrates why the secondary ticket market is an open and positive resource for customers. The customer concerned was looking for very popular event tickets (DMB -- at Madison Square!!) which would have sold out from Ticketmaster quickly regardless of the existence of ticket sellers. It's because a ticket reseller purchased the tickets, repriced them, and put them up for the sale again that the customer even had access to such tickets at a later date and time. The customer wouldn't have been able to go to the event had only Ticketmaster been the one selling the tickets.
Regardless, we're sorry for the customer's unhappiness with the ticket price and truly hope he enjoyed the opportunity to see Dave Mathews! |
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