Like many, we are experiencing a rash of ticket orders from out of state ticket brokers/resellers that rip off customers, and then try to dispute some or all of the charges. A person at our org has heard that some venues are limiting sales to out of state customers to ordering by phone only.
I'm not sure how this would be accomplished on TNEW, and ask, is anyone doing this? If yes, how?
We categorize the secondary market in two ways. First, those ticket brokers/resellers that do rip off customers. Most times the customers who receive (and overpay) for such tickets do have legitimate tickets. Occasionally, the resold tickets are resold twice, which certainly makes for issues at curtain. More often than not it is more of a customer service nightmare since the broker promises better seats than they deliver and of course at 3-4 times the price. Contacting the original buyer is just about always impossible. Deactivating their account to prevent them from doing this again only leads to them opening another online account. The best (and I suppose only) way to combat this is to delay the eTicket Release date to 48 hours prior to the performance. This should disrupt the resellers ability to fulfill the resold tickets in a timely fashion. Check on this fx for v15 and v16 in regard to it working for PAH and/or Mobile Ticketing. I know that in v16 it will work for both deliver methods. Can't remember if this is true for v15. The second kind of "reseller" is basically the fraudulent buyer, one whose order eventually comes back to us in the form of a chargeback due to fraud. We have found these online orders are made last minute, sometimes the day of the show, with seat purchases being quite random, sometimes just a group of random single seats. These chargebacks are most often impossible to fight. We have a report called New Records Summary run everyday to pick up any strange accounts being created. We at first did this because we were getting multiple new online accounts being created with gibberish names and fake addresses, but no orders created. This is where I spot new out-of-state accounts with orders that seem suspect. I either identify them as a normal reseller and mark them with a reseller constituency, or in the possible case of fraud, if the show has not occurred, we return the order and email the patron that their address could not be verified and their seats have been invalidated. We have opened tickets on these issues. I suggest you do the same. If enough of us are logging these issues, then perhaps we can see some resolution. In our case, we were first encouraged to employ the use of AVS (address verification service), but there is a problem with this service with using Discover, it will decline ALL Discover transactions. That is suppose to be fixed but not yet. They have added a new risk profile to our Tessitura Merchant Services which seems to have helped with the fraudulent orders. I remain stumped by the bogus account that are being created on a daily basis. For those, I merely go through my daily report and search for the gibberish name (which are easy to spot) then deactivate their account. This can be quite laborious. I know that this is a lot, but the problem with the secondary market, customer service and protecting ourselves against fraud and potentially fraudulent accounts is a HUGE problem. And one that needs more attention.
Thanks for your reply.
Michael Dundon said:We at first did this because we were getting multiple new online accounts being created with gibberish names and fake addresses, but no orders created.
We get these, too. No transactions, no interaction with the site at all, just a garbage constituent, and a login. I delete these as I find them.
Michael Dundon said:We have opened tickets on these issues.
We will, The number of these used to be at an annoyance level, but they are becoming much more numerous lately,
Michael Dundon said:we were first encouraged to employ the use of AVS (address verification service), but there is a problem with this service with using Discover,
Nice to know. We've investigated an AVS in the past, but, like many I assume, chose not to pursue due to the high per-address cost. We'll look again soon, perhaps at TLCC2023.
Are you guys using reCAPTCHA?
I don't believe so, because everyone (including me) hates them, but these bots may force us to reconsider.
Yes, WE DO, Gawain. reCAPTCHA is used for all newly created accounts. This is why I question if this is BOT activity or not. I have asked in one of my multiple tickets if there is a more stringent system in place, but I am assuming no. With the number of accounts being created on a daily basis, I am thinking that it must be BOT activity. AND if it is, apparently the functionality is not working in this case.
About how many of these accounts are being created? And what's the timing of them (are they all created at certain hours? Are they created in rapid fire succession?)
Where we've had accounts like this generated it's been in relatively small scale and clearly by human operators. The last time we had an issue with it (long, long ago) we didn't have CVV and so human operators were coming in and testing lists of stolen card numbers.
It's a mixed bag: I think the TNEW one will just make you click a box, which is pretty nominal. I hate, hate, hate the picture ones though. "Identify all the pictures with a motorbike!" That's not a motorbike, that's a scooter, etc.
https://xkcd.com/2228/
Gawain Lavers said:I hate, hate, hate the picture ones though.
Me, too. Universally and deservedly reviled.