Losing Your Head To Scalping

It pays to draw customer attention to changes in your company’s terms and conditions.

Organisers of Australia’s largest rock concert series The Big Day Out were last month found to have ‘engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct’ over its attempts to stop ticket scalping.

As the AAP story reports
“eBay, which profits from the on-selling of tickets, sued Creative (the promoter) after changes were made to the conditions on tickets for the 2007 Big Day Out, which has already sold out in Sydney, Melbourne and the Gold Coast.

”According to a condition on the 2007 tickets, the ticket "will be cancelled and the holder will be refused entry" if it has been resold for profit.

”Previous Big Day Out tickets had stated the ticket ‘will become voidable and the holder may be refused entry’ if it was resold for profit.

”eBay argued the provision was misleading and deceptive.

”Justice Steven Rares agreed, but said the result was ‘unfortunate’. He said Creative ‘did not have reasonable grounds’ to claim every ticket resold for profit would be cancelled.”

While having clearly stated terms and conditions are essential for every business, it is vital that they don’t contravene the law, no matter how just the reason.

Just as an aside, the comments accompanying the linked story demonstrate that scalping is a hot button topic.