Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR JOE
COHEN, MR
GRAHAM BURNS,
MR DOMINIC
TITCHENER-BARRETT,
MR ERIC
BAKER, MR
PAUL DRAKE
AND MR
ALASTAIR MCGOWAN
26 JUNE 2007
Q80 Alan Keen: At least some of you
sell tickets above their face value, which is against the terms
and conditions of those tickets. How do you justify that? Are
you happy about breaking those terms and conditions?
Mr Titchener-Barrett: I think
we in Britain live in a western pluralist liberal democracy where
the free market reins. We live in a laissez-faire world of economics.
Q81 Mr Sanders: So does the rule
of law.
Mr Titchener-Barrett: What difference
does it make if one in five houses in London are now owned by
property investors? In my opinion, it is a free-market investment.
Why should people not be able to buy and sell? To enforce it would
be extremely difficult.
Mr Baker: I think, again, it is
important to realise that people should be free to buy and sell
and, of course, we do live in a rule of law country, which we
all obey. Our point of view on it is that consumer protection
is very important in this country and there are very strong consumer
protection laws that protect the consumer and mean that only certain
terms and conditions are enforceable and fair, and simply because
someone puts a term or condition on, if it violates a consumer's
right, for example, that they have purchased something and they
have the right to sell it on, we do not think that would be enforceable
but certainly people have the remedy of the courts if they would
wish to test that and they believe their terms and conditions
are enforceable. We believe the proper forum would be the court.
Q82 Mr Sanders: What bit of "not
for resale" do you not understand?
Mr Baker: Again, it is our respectful
position that if someone has purchased a ticket, they have the
right to sell their ticket on, in the same way that if I purchased
a book, I have the right to sell the book on, regardless of whether
or not the publisher says that they want the terms and conditions
to say you cannot resell that book. We believe that is an example
of a term and condition which would not be fair to the consumer.
Q83 Mr Sanders: You make the law.
Mr Baker: No, sir. The Government
makes the rules and obviously we would interpret the rules but
we feel that the consumer has a right to sell it on. If there
is a problem with a consumer breaking a term and condition, then
we believe it would be between that body and the consumer and
they certainly should take up that issue.
Mr Cohen: I would add to that
that the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 suggests that a standard
term is unfair if it is contrary to the requirement of good faith
and causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and
obligations arising out of the contract to the detriment of the
consumer. There is also a suggestion that terms need to be reasonable,
or an exception to a term needs to be reasonable, and we do not
believe there is a sense of reasonableness that something should
not be sold above face value.
Mr McGowan: It is also interesting
that the OFT in their evidence to the Committee have suggested
that the terms and conditions which are attached to some of these
tickets are potentially unfair. So if the OFT have doubts themselves,
I think we are perfectly entitled to allow the resale of these
tickets.
Q84 Alan Keen: Many ASTA members
and some of you here today are already selling tickets for the
rugby next year. Do you not think that is wrong? You heard the
rugby people mention that earlier this morning. If tickets have
not gone on sale yet and you are selling them, do you think that
is acceptable? How do you justify it?
Mr Cohen: Again, I would take
the view that we have terms and conditions and a limited user
agreement within our service, and part of that limited user agreement
says that if you sign up to this service, you have to abide by
these rules, and one of the rules is if you list a ticket for
sale and it sells, you then have to deliver that ticket. So long
as that person is abiding by those rules, no, it is not wrong.
Q85 Alan Keen: What if you cannot
deliver the ticket? What do you do in those cases?
Mr Cohen: We take a guarantee
from all of our sellers, so everyone who lists a ticket for sale
on our site provides us with a debit card or credit card and in
the terms and conditions it says if they do not deliver the tickets,
we have the right to purchase alternative tickets and charge their
debit or credit card for them. Everyone who sells tickets through
Seatwave—and I believe viagogo is the same—has to
enter into that limited user agreement and stand by it. In that
way we are able to provide a guarantee.
Q86 Chairman: So are you selling
futures on Seatwave, like the example that Alan gave of tickets
that are not yet on sale?
Mr Cohen: No. In our limited user
agreement, again, we say you have to own and possess the tickets
that you sell.
Q87 Chairman: So there are no Rugby
World Cup tickets on sale on Seatwave?
Mr Cohen: There are Rugby World
Cup tickets for sale, but those have been for sale already. Those
have gone on sale.
Q88 Alan Keen: Are there no limits
to what you would do? Take Live Earth, for instance, Live 8. That
is a charity. Do you not feel that was at least something you
should have refused to put on your site? I think you have all
got them.
Mr McGowan: With Live Earth in
the US we did a deal whereby 20% of any of the resale value then
went back to the charities concerned. It is important to stress
that when a charity sells a ticket, they obviously get the money
from the primary sale. What we have done with eBay and the deal
with Live Earth is given them an opportunity to raise more money
for good causes also from resale. We think that makes sense. It
means that the consumers can still resell their tickets and the
charity also benefits from it.
Mr Drake: eBay has a mechanism
to raise huge amounts of money for charity in this way and this
is something that we are looking at. For example, in the US, the
equivalent programme in the US, they have raised over $100 million
since the start of the programme. There is huge scope there for
fund raising that we as eBay are interested in pursuing.
Mr Burns: I would like to interject
because the charitable tickets, I think, need to be taken on a
case-by-case basis. One of our members, Get Me In, who operate
an organisation on a very similar model to Seatwave and viagogo,
are listing tickets for the Diana concert this coming weekend.
Those tickets have actually been put on there by one of the charities,
so I think it would be wrong to say, "Look, you are selling
charity tickets here." Those tickets have been put on there
by one of the charities to raise money for that charity, and I
know that the CEO of that organisation has donated all the proceeds
from that sale to that charity also. I think we need to be very
careful with charitable tickets but it is a well-made point.
Q89 Paul Farrelly: Can I just interject?
Get Me In, one of your members, as you mentioned, are advertising
tickets for the 2008 Heineken Cup Final which are not on sale
yet, and they are advertising them at Twickenham Stadium, London
where the final will not take place.
Mr Burns: I am sorry. I cannot
comment on that but I am grateful to you for bringing it to my
attention.
Q90 Paul Farrelly: That is one of
your members.
Mr Burns: I am grateful to you
for bringing that to my attention but I cannot comment on that
because I am unaware of the item being offered there, but I will
now enquire as to why that is and the circumstances surrounding
that.
Q91 Paul Farrelly: I do not think,
Chairman, we have a list of ASTA members. Could you send us one,
please?
Mr Burns: I certainly will, yes.
[39]
Q92 Paul Farrelly: So we can do a bit
more research that you have not done on some of the practices
of your members.
Mr Burns: Yes.
Mr McGowan: In response to your
question, one of the things we have done as a result of the Ticket
Touting Summits with the DCMS is that we have acted in response
to a request from event organisers to take down tickets for events
where, for example, the date has not yet been announced or tickets
had not gone on sale to the public, either through fan clubs or
debentures or any other means. And where they have spoken to us
and said, "Will you take down these tickets because there
is no possible way that this person who is claiming to sell a
ticket could have it," we take it down those listings. So
as far as we are concerned, we would not condone future selling
of that sort.
Q93 Helen Southworth: How many complaints
have each of you had from consumers about either fraudulent or
unfair sales? We have the example of Seatwave where a ticket was
right at the back, with poor visibility and nobody knew so until
they had paid all the money out for the ticket.
Mr Cohen: Can I comment on that?
I think it is a great example of the value of Seatwave. Nick came
up and showed some tickets for sale that were obviously very bad
seats and very high priced and, you know what? They are still
for sale. No-one has bought them, because you have complete visibility
into all of the tickets that are available in the marketplace
and you can see exactly where those seats are.
Q94 Helen Southworth: How many complaints
have you had from consumers who have not been satisfied with their
purchases, either because they were fraudulent or unfair?
Mr Cohen: An exact number of complaints?
I could not tell you. I could write to you later and tell you
exactly how many we have had and how we deal with them. [40]
Mr Baker: I would like to give
you a very direct answer to your question. We have not had any
complaints from consumers about fraudulent tickets or unfair practices.
In fact, it underscores what we are trying to do. We really do
work for the fan, because that is our customer—not the venue,
not the league, but the fan and the consumer, the hard-working
person who bought a ticket, wants to sell it or wants to buy it.
But the quick answer to your question, as a matter of fact, is
that we have not had any complaints about fraud and about inefficiencies.
Q95 Helen Southworth: Or unfairness?
Mr Baker: Or unfairness. We have
heard many complaints from people who do not like the current
system and have told us that the reason they used our site is
because they have had complaints about unfairness and a difficult
process dealing with someone out on the street or dealing with
rogue websites. That is what we exist to deal with.
Q96 Helen Southworth: What about
eBay?
Mr McGowan: I cannot give you
a specific number in relation to tickets, but in relation to our
general fraud statistics, they are very good by industry standards.
I think it is something like 0.06% of what we call our Gross Merchandise
Volume. That is the total value of the goods that are bought and
sold on the site.
Q97 Helen Southworth: It is tickets
that we are particularly looking at at the moment. If you could
give us that information, that would be very useful.
Mr McGowan: I do not have those
figures available with me just now but I am very happy to.
Q98 Helen Southworth: You have not
done a check on the situation?
Mr Drake: We would not necessarily
have access to that. We are not involved in the transactions,
so, if there is a complaint, the buyer might go back to the original
seller and complain outside of the eBay website, so we would not
necessarily know.
Q99 Helen Southworth: You do not
have a mechanism set up to deal with complaints?
Mr Drake: We have a feedback mechanism
on eBay and there are thousands and thousands of positive feedbacks
left by happy buyers when they have received their item. That
is one indication as to the general high level of consumer satisfaction.
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