Livenation & Festival Republic Work With Police To Start New Anti-Fraud Move
|
|
|
|
Monday, 02 May 2011 |
Written by Jon Stickler
|
|
News has surfaced that Festival Republic and Livenation, two of the biggest names in live UK event promotion, have agreed to a new idea that will help protect ticket buyers from falling victim to ticketing scam websites.
According to the National Fraud Authority, £168m is lost via fraudulent ticket websites. The new idea will see both Festival Republic and Livenation change their current practice of sending out tickets just before performances, which sometimes leaves ticket-buyers waiting months until they receive their tickets, to sending out tickets to the buyer as soon as possible following the purchase.
The change comes after Police said that the delay in tickets being issued to buyers made it difficult to prove that scam sites did not have the tickets to sell in the first place. Confusing you may think, as the delay in sending tickets out is supposed to help by reducing the amount of time scammers have to counterfeit originals and sell them on. However, a report from BBC Radio 4's 'You and Yours' explained that as a result of the long delay before customers received their tickets from the sellers, a wait which can sometimes be up to 6 months, tens of thousands of people have been scammed over the past five years after realising that their purchased tickets are yet to be received only a few days before the event. By then of course its too late to do anything about it, the fraudsters are most-likely to claim that ticket suppliers have gone bust leaving them without any tickets to pass on to their confused and angry customers. On some occasions fraudulent sites have simply shut down, leaving no contact details for customers and no trace for the police to investigate.
Police, Livenation and Festival Republic, who are the promoters behind the Reading and Leeds festivals, have all agreed that tickets will now be sent out to customers as soon as they are purchased with assessments made on the impact the new practice has on counterfeiting.
City of London Police Det Ch Supt commented on the idea saying. "We believe that (the new practice) would stop a lot of people being the victims because we'd be able to act on it quicker, convicting the kind of people we want to convict," he added. "It's not about business; they are fraudsters."
Ticket-buyers should always be wary of fraudulent ticket websites. Unfortunately there are still many in operation and hundreds get away with scamming innocent customers into handing over their money for event tickets that don’t even exist. Nigel Sachdev, Managing Director of Stereoboard.com, the secure website who deal with official agents and exchange marketplaces to compare ticket prices, welcomed the idea.
"This is a sensible move to combat fraud and give police the powers to close down dodgy sites, such as gigsport.com, ticketindex.net and blceventtickets.com, much quicker."
"You only have to look around the web to see that thousands have been ripped off, but police have been powerless to to take action against these so called companies until the events have passed and tickets have not arrived. This move will certainly help with the long-term UK frauds, and we hope it will also go some way to reacting faster against the International scam sites, which prey on UK consumers when large events go on sale."
Always be on your guard for fraudulent ticket websites. You can buy tickets safely and securely via Stereoboard.com. Check the latest UK tour and gig news & ticket onsale dates here.
Check out Stereoboard's recent short film, 'Access All Areas', which follows the experiences of a group of friends, who opt to go 'off road' obtaining their tickets, to blag their way backstage at a major gig and suffering dramatic consequences...
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
We don't run any advertising! Our editorial content is solely funded by lovely people like yourself using Stereoboard's listings when buying tickets for live events. To keep supporting us, next time you're looking for concert, festival, sport or theatre tickets, please search for "Stereoboard". It costs you nothing, you may find a better price than the usual outlets, and save yourself from waiting in an endless queue on Friday mornings as we list ALL available sellers!
Let Us Know Your Thoughts
Related News |
No related news to show
