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168 Comments
- inactive, on 10/17/2007, -1/+137A music promoter is calling eBay the biggest rip-off merchants in the world...
I'm not sure he's familiar with his own work... - shadowspawn, on 10/17/2007, -7/+83after walking through 2 inches of piss and ***** from their older audience that wished they were younger, showing up drunk at their last "reunion" concert, after purchasing t-shirts that fell apart after 3 washings, and listening to 10 minutes of the band and 50 minutes of some indian crap orchestra... who the ***** really cares?
Great band in their day. 30 years ago. - gmc74, on 10/17/2007, -8/+61Welcome to the free market Harvey, you jackass...
- Dokument, on 10/17/2007, -1/+45Yeah ebay, take that. meah (sticking tounge out)
- bwhite, on 10/19/2007, -15/+55A lot of people don't like web sites or services. Who cares and why is this relevant for others to read?
- bossm4n, on 10/17/2007, -1/+41Dear Harvey,
If you want to screw all of those Ebay auctioneers scalping tickets, talk the boys into doing 3+ more shows back-to-back, then watch the prices of those Ebay tickets fall through the floor. Supply and demand.
Signed,
Bona fide fans - inactive, on 10/17/2007, -1/+36Promoter sounds like he's just whining..
Policy is policy, but since he doesn't like it, he'll make sure to ruin eBay's life. Yes, like some half-ass LZ promoter can take down eBay, go ahead and try. - tizz66, on 10/10/2007, -1/+29ESPECIALLY his own work - for this very gig. They did a system whereby people registered for codes, which were sent out when tickets went on sale, and you had to give you code to buy a ticket. AFTER they had sold the tickets, they told people that any tickets bought under a name different to the one the code was registered to would be cancelled - so if you paid for your tickets using your spouses card, your tickets will be voided. Not only that, they didn't tell people you had to be over 18 to attend, so anyone under 18 who got tickets is out of luck.
Good job changing the goalposts AFTER you've sold your tickets. What a ***** way to do business. eBay isn't a patch on him. - SiNN4R, on 10/10/2007, -0/+27Yes we are. I am a nigerian prince who has vast amounts of wealth. I would love to give you all my worldly possessions for your financial information.
- fuzzmeister, on 10/10/2007, -2/+26Did you just compare eBay to a brutal communist regime? I think someone needs a bit of perspective.
- elk1, on 10/17/2007, -1/+23ebay is awesome, and buying second hand tickets always comes at a premium.
ticketmaster on the other hand are a bunch of monopolistic scam artists. For small dollar shows in particular. I want to buy tickets to an $18 show and have to shell out $10 in various handling fees per ticket. Then I have to pay for them to print and ship them to me on top of that. Now that is a scam, and there are no options for getting tickets elsewhere. - skyshock1, on 10/17/2007, -9/+31"I have begged them to take [the tickets] off and they have basically told us to ***** off"
Source? - cal0140, on 10/15/2007, -5/+27Because he's saying that to enter the event you'll need not just the passcode provided with the tickets, but identification of the original ticket purchaser or you will be refused entry. Not only that, but no mention of this was given prior to ticket sales, as well as several days after while people spent hundreds of dollars on eBay for now useless tickets. But, you didn't read it so why would you know that?
- Firethorne, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21Nope, just redundant.
- Godel, on 10/10/2007, -0/+19The source is the guy himself. He's saying that he himself asked ebay to take the tickets off. What more of a source do you want?
- kanabiis, on 10/17/2007, -6/+24So, a promoter running a very draconian anti fan ticket lottery system is complaining that Ebay is allowing users to sell the tickets to the event they they now own??
Yea, ***** off Led Zeppelin, and your ***** ass promoter. Once I buy tickets to an event they are MINE, to do with what I want, even if that means just to wipe my ass with them...
Who the ***** do they think they are? I hated Ozzfest's attempt at something similar, but at least they were giving the tickets away for free, this system that Led Zeppelin is using, its just anti fan all the way around...
Good for eBay.... I want to send this douche an email letting him know just what a ***** hypocritical moron he is... - Saiing, on 10/17/2007, -6/+23Hypocrit. Goldsmith's Led Zepplin tickets are priced at 125 UK pounds each (nearly 250 US dollars) and he has the nerve to claim people are being 'ripped off' by others!? 250 bucks for a single show? What kind of fantasy world does he live in?
- Ventolin, on 10/10/2007, -3/+20Calm down there, wikipedia.
- CyberSkull, on 10/17/2007, -0/+17He's just bitter that he can't get a taste of the resale profits.
- sockpuppets, on 10/17/2007, -0/+15When the Lance Armstrong foundation asked eBay to delist their bracelets they were told the same thing. If they're going to keep that revenue they're certainly not going to give a ***** about Led Zepplin tickets...
- joe90210, on 10/17/2007, -2/+16what a ***** moron, all he's doing is punishing fans who are doing anything they can to get tickets, the scalpers have already made their money, what the ***** do they care that you won't let people in now?
- ivandir, on 10/10/2007, -1/+15Aren't we supposed to believe everything we read on the internets?
- speakerfordead, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14Would this be because they can't be sure two people from the same home aren't the same person?
- sockpuppets, on 10/17/2007, -5/+19If it were a double homicide and paypal was killed in the struggle I'd be ok with that.
- jmpeagle, on 10/17/2007, -4/+17Ebay should kill Harvey Goldsmith and auction his corpse
- ToadLeg, on 10/19/2007, -0/+13It looks like the same ***** some people tried to pull when they showed up with $20,000 to buy all the Iphones that Apple had hoping that they would run out and they would be one of the few people to have them, jacking up the price on Ebay.
- lunarworks, on 10/17/2007, -1/+12A single show. That's the key phrase.
They haven't played for something like 25 years, and they don't currently have plans to do it again. - mandarin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
- Markus86, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8wow, that guy is just being a real big baby about this, who cares as long as money is made
- readerofbooks, on 10/10/2007, -4/+11i love the last comment of the article
"In the standfirst we mistakenly called Harvey Goldsmith Harvey Goldstein. This has been corrected."
still a nice jewish name though whew our plot to take over the world remains unaffected - satanatnmtedu, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8And, one should understand that the concert would be sought by scalpers, and the real fans would be the ones buying the scalped tickets. So, the real fans are the ones that will be seeing the concert. By taking this stance, he is screwing the real fans he calims to want to support.
The guy is a tool. - MrUnderbridge, on 10/17/2007, -2/+9In the name of balance...
Let's consider what's going on here. If scalpers can make a nearly 10x markup on the tickets, that means one of two things is going on here:
A) Harvey has no concept of what the band could command at the gate, or
B) Harvey actually wanted to reward the real fans through a lottery system at below-market rates
Now, I know it fits in better with the whole hating the music industry thing to go with A). But, the fact is that he could have done an auction from the outset to make the most money. The fact that a lottery was established to allow people to buy the tickets does sort of imply that he knew he was taking below-market prices for the tickets. Otherwise he could have just let supply and demand do it for him and forget the lottery.
If I were a promoter and I really wanted to do something nice for the loyal fans of an old band, and the fans instead turned shill, I'd be pissed too. I can't prove that's what happened here, but it does appear that he made a real effort to control the costs of attending the show only to have the scalpers (the real bottom feeders, by the way) come in and make the money he left on the table.
For what it's worth, I have no love for music promoters nor the industry at large, but I think this might be a case of a decent guy who's pissed because his good deed got punished. - card51short, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7source? it's his quote, doesn't mean the person who wrote the article has to check up on all the claims of person who quotes.
- orangysb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7actually it is still free market because people are free to choose whether to buy from these scalpers or not, if there is no demand for these inflated tickets, the scalpers would've made a loss but have already purchased the tickets, so the organisers are still raking in revenue, but if there is demand, that is there are people willing to pay the higher price, both the organisers and the scalpers would make profits, so the surplus is maximised as a whole
- jongos, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Well said.
- sims5487, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7It's simple economics. What the ***** else did this guy expect? High demand and low supply is going to lead to a very high price.
- havok0283, on 10/17/2007, -8/+14I am glad someone is standing up to this *****! It is ridiculous, every time a concert or show releases tickets, these douche bags at these ticket hocking companies swoop in, buy up the best seats, then turn around and sell them back to the fans at a 500% markup. If you like a band, and can't front 1000 bucks a pop for one ticket these days, you are screwed! I like the idea of selling tickets to individuals, then having them prove they are in fact the ones who bought the tickets in the first place.
- Kurisuku, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6He probably thinks he's punk rock even though he is, of couse, the man.
- asspants, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6he's pissed off that he didnt have the idea first to sell the tickets on ebay.
- Schmidtopolis, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Just shows you how little the previous generation understands the CURRENT market, and how practices need to change, and adapt to the times, not fight them tooth and nail.
- scabbers, on 10/17/2007, -5/+9eBay are a bunch of crooks. They have millions of blatantly counterfeit goods for sale by "powersellers" and never pull the auctions even if you report them.
- dafragsta, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5What a coincidence! Passive compliance with the intentions of people looking to commit fraud against fans and smarmy dismissive responses to fairly impassioned comments that I care about internet people's turn-offs are such a turn-off to me.
- geekee, on 10/17/2007, -4/+8You guys don't get it. He's pissed off because he wanted fans to buy the tickets at what he considered a reasonable price. He doesn't want scalpers buying the tickets instead, and then reselling them on ebay, forcing fans to pay much more for them. It was supposed to be a lottery, not a free market deal where only the richest fans go. He probably doesn't have any legal standing unless there are laws specifically against scalping.
- grizzlyb3ar, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6absolutely, if that means that the average punter cannot get tickets to their gigs!
- imikedaman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5My PayPal account suspended for months because my brother (who lives 1000 miles away) had his account locked for suspicious activity.
- suiteone, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6What a whiner, if he is so concerned about the money, he should have held his own auction. If a fan is willing to pay more money, I don't see how they should be punished. Get over It!
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Body parts are against their TOS.
- Rikkochet, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4They shut you down but you managed to throw in some punctuation? That's like chiseling AAAARRRRGGGHH on the wall while you're dying in the middle of writing...
- Nocturnal, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5LOL at the counter feiter digging you down.
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