I avoid it like the plague. I have had 3 friends buy tickets using Viagogo and each time the tickets were were not recognised by the bar code scaner and they had to buy tickets at the door.
Viagogo – has anyone ever had a good experience?
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Wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole – if I couldn’t get tickets from the venue or somewhere kosher like Ticketmaster I wouldn’t bother.
Getting plane tickets from anywhere except the airline is high risk too, especially if you need to change your booking.
I get @Bargepole to do all my bookings.
I have used Stubhub on occasion, but only if tickets are at or below face. Never had a bad experience, they are very reliable. Viagogo? No idea
Stubhub cancelled two premium tickets (I’m talking £200+ per ticket) to see Leonard Cohen two days before the gig. Transport arranged, hotel booked, dog-sitters booked. They were simply not bothered and refused to even consider compensating me anything for the disruption and expense they caused me.
Bastards.
Oh? Maybe the North American version is better.
I presume they were cancelled because the person (tout?) selling them couldn’t supply them? In which case a refund is about all you can hope for unfortunately. Using official ticket sellers like Ticketmaster is the only way to be completely sure you will get in,
Is Viagogo the one elder men use to help them stand up ?
I thought it was a taxi service run by Trouble Funk.
I thought it was Belinda Carlisle’s two-step route to solo stardom.
I have – although this could be a little controversial.
Until last summer I lived in Copenhagen and realised it was very common for ‘resellers’ (I liked to assume organised touts) to rapidly reduce prices in the hours and moments before the gig.
The proximity of where I lived to the centre of town enabled me to buy tickets at the very last minute – download the ticket and be at any venue within 30 mins.
We saw:
Arctic Monkeys – £18
Katy Perry – £23
Erasure-£25
First Aid Kit – £15
The 1975 – £18
Paul McCartney-£13
The McCartney one was interesting. Bagged tickets just as the doors opened – travelled to venue and found the seats were very near the front and had a face value of c£230. Engagement with those seated nearby revealed a block has been bought by a company who then bundled the tickets with a meal and overnight stay at the hotel next door and we had clearly bought the unsold seats.
It didn’t always work and sometime we missed out. But there was something thrilling about starting the evening with no plans at all and within the hour being in front of a major show – even if it wasn’t somebody we had a particular fondness for.
The controversy? I could myself have been stitching up genuine punters – will never know.
Footnote – I have a friend who until recently worked for Academy group in London and her job partly involved turning away punters with viagogo printouts on the door – She quit realising her job had become proactively ruining people’s evenings.
Great anecdote.
A mate got Prince seats in the VIP section for a fraction of the standard seat by just looking a day before the show.
Yes with Stubhub I got great seats for “sold out” David Byrne show for a much reduced price.
I refuse to buy concert tickets unless they’re in the VIP box next to HP and Peter Gabriel.
Did I ever tell you about Hammersmith 1975? Well, we all met in the Hope & Anchor at six…
Not to dissimilar to neverflown above. Pre-lockdown I would often take my wife and daughter to gigs that I wasn’t particularly interested in, and would wait outside to pick them up after the show. For most shows from smaller venues to stadiums, around 8.45 – 9pm just before the band were due on, and everyone who was going was already in, I’d often go up to a tout and say not that fussed as waiting to pick up afterwards, but if they had any tickets left I’d take one for £10 just to kill some time. As their market had gone by then, I usually managed to pick one up and get in just as the intro started. Probably worked about 4 in 5 shows. A bit of a risky strategy if it’s a band you really want to see though.