Fans vs. Ticket Touts for The Green Day Tour – Touts 34 Fans 0

As a rather big Green Day fan I was excited when the dates for Green Day's UK tour were released. Two gigs at the MEN (Manchester Evening News Arena) in Manchester. Tickets went on sale at 10am on 1st May. This is the story of my morning of excitement and disappointment!

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9:55 - I'm sat here with my card in hand ready to order 7 tickets for myself and friends. It had been rumoured that it would be limited to 2 tickets per person so I had friends standing by ready to order in case this was true.

9:58 - I starts refreshing the page waiting for that Order link to arrive.

10:00 - Order link is there, I clicks it and finds out that it is 2 per person all is fine I start the process to purchase my 2 tickets and let friends know they have to go do the same.

10:01 - I'm greeted with the "Please wait" sign on ticket master

10:03 - "No Tickets Found" appears on screen! Presuming this is just an error with the site due to clicking to fast I goes through the process again, and again, and again. Finding the same problems, cries of "It's sold out" appear through MSN and text messages.

10:05 - I visit 3 other ticket selling websites only to see a massive "SOLD OUT" sign plastered across all the Standing tickets for both days!

10:10 - After many phone calls and chats about what we are going to do I decide to check e-bay. A search for "Green Day MEN" results in 6 pairs of tickets already available. This is 10 minutes after the tickets officially went on sale. Prices range from £80 starting bid to £250.

10:30 - The same search on ebay now reveals 34 tickets available to purchase on ebay! The buy it now tickets have vanished giving some lucky touts a nice hefty profit.

So here lies the issues with ticket sales... Why is it possible for 34 tickets to be available on ebay at this point in time for over double the price, however it's impossible for me to get hold of 7 tickets for dedicated fans! Something NEEDS to be done about the state of ticket sales in this country! Limiting tickets to 2 per person clearly isn't working and all it does it mess up legitimate fans. For example, if we now want to go purchase seated tickets, we need to purchase 7 of them. The odds on us managing to get 7 seats together are probably less than winning the lottery, which will leave the possibilty of 1 of our friends having to sit alone. THat's not a fun time for anyone!

I think it's time we started having Photo tickets! Sites such as ticketmaster have profiles of people and when tickets are printed they appear with your photo and name! This would not stop people like me ordering for friends as you could have your account set up with details of all your friends so you could specify which people you were buying tickets for. This would completely stop touts as you would know that if your ticket didn't have your face on it you'd just get rejected anyway!

It's time something was done about this! Why should real fans be expected to pay over the top prices on ebay due to ticket sellers inability to think of a better way to verify ticket purchases!