Hey, it looks like a company (with very poor reviews, bonus) called Secure Tickets is scraping our performances and offering them for sale online. Has anyone else had this happen, and is there a standard means of recourse for stopping it?
Ticket broker? If that's what you mean, then yep. All the time. To my knowledge there is no "standard" means of recourse for stopping it and some of it depends on where are you are and what laws your state has in place. Google is (theoretically) trying to make it harder but...
--Michaela Donnelly
Michaela Donnelly said: Google is (theoretically) trying to make it harder but...
Yeah, we discovered it because their Google SEO is nearly as good as ours...
From what I can tell they're not scalping in the sense of buying our tickets and then reselling them. I assume that if they make a sale on their site (and honor it, also not a surety) then they must be turning around and buying the tickets from our site via some mechanism, presumably automated.
Maybe a letter to the State AG?
We have brokers that do exactly that for us. Start selling tickets for a bunch of stuff, and then turn around and buy them from us once they make a sale.
Scalping is legal in Indiana, so there is only so much we can do. We DO have a maximum sale count, so every once in a while we have gotten to them when they try to purchase tickets that are past the count of 8 because we will just refund them categorically. But then they just have a different employee purchase them or purchase themselves under a different name and card. And, like I said, only so much we can do.
Best of luck!
We have pretty broad terms for ticket brokers and we would consider them a "ticket broker", often they will claim "discounts" etc. etc. but they very often sell over FMV. We deal with it A LOT, especially around Nutcracker. So much so that we made print at home a benefit of being a subscriber, and we won't mail to PO Boxes without calling first. It's crazy. We have language on our site outlining our Unauthorized Ticket Broker Policy.
When people do buy from an UATO and they call to complain we usually encourage them to report the broker to the state (it's illegal in MA). If they sell them for the listed price of the ticket, and are just acting as a facilitator--however unauthorized--you may not have much to fight against (especially if they have paid for the ticket) and you received the money (which is so frustrating) but a letter to the AG probably wouldn't hurt.
One of the other things we do is adjust our display language and metadata on our site to include keywords like "Official Box Office of the Boston Ballet", etc. That might help if you are not already doing that. Its a source of constant frustration and I always feel bad when I am at the theatre and someone comes up to me who bought through one of these groups and didn't get the seats they thought they deserved.
Sorry, not super helpful, unless it helps to know you are not the only one...
--M