Crackdown on online ticket sellers -
Crackdown on online ticket sellers Summary:
Despite precautions taken to avoid the chance of touts, four tickets to see JK Rowling at the Edinburgh Book Festival were up for sale on eBay recently.
Article:
Despite precautions taken to avoid the chance of touts, four tickets to see JK Rowling at the Edinburgh Book Festival
were up for sale on
eBay recently. Rowling's publishers contacted eBay and the tickets were taken off the website before they were sold. The Book Festival is getting underway today, and Rowling's book-reading will take place on August 15th.
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As the annual event was getting under way today, it was revealed that four of the 500 tickets allocated to fans by an impartial ballot, had been put up for sale on internet auction site eBay.
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The seller said that the main ticket holder had to be male and would be required to provide address identification and proof of payment, both of which he would provide.
Before the tickets could be sold, however, they were removed from the internet auction site, at the request of JK Rowling’s publicity team.
A spokeswoman for JK Rowling said they had acted quickly to ensure the tickets were not sold on. "This was brought to our attention by a fan and we were obviously concerned," she said. "We contacted eBay and asked them to remove the tickets from sale, as they were never intended to be sold like this.
The tickets were clearly marked as being non-transferable and the seller knew he needed to provide personal details to whoever bought them.
"It was a very naughty thing to try and do. This is the only incident we’ve heard of and we would hope that with the appearance coming up quite soon it will be the first and last incident."
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Olivier Joly, of the Edinburgh Book Festival, said: "People who have been allocated tickets each have their own ticket and selling them on is not allowed. Because of the security measures we have put in place I would not expect any more people trying to sell the tickets.
"To be honest, most people wouldn’t part with them, they are families with young children and more than anything they want to meet JK Rowling."
Source:
Veritaserum