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The Buyer’s Guide of Face Value Ticket

OK, if you are reading this, I suspect that you are keen to learn more…

This guide intends to give advices and tips on how to get [2] face value tickets. If you want your next concert or event tickets at the right price, a buyer’s guide will not buy the tickets for you, all it can do is to give you the right direction. After that it is up to you to follow this direction or take a shortcut to the touting way right to Ebay…

Firstly you need to understand how the touts act. If you want to beat them, you need to do exactly what they do, so the main question would be: How do touts always manage to get tickets, or the best seats, and not you? Well this is also what this blog will do from now on: FaceValueTicket.co.uk will act like a tout, doing exactly what they do, but instead of using all info and tricks to resell tickets to you at a ridiculous price, it will share all this with you. So if you cannot be bothered to read this guide, this page followed by 3 other useful pages of the blog, well simply visit us occasionally to get some updates by reading our last posts. Or [3] subscribe to Face Value Ticket and receive all posts in real time straight to your mailbox with all the latest news, presales, public sales, where to buy, when to buy, tickets for “sold-out” gigs back on sale, new dates added, etc…

NOW touts have 3 ways to buy tickets that they will resell afterwards to you for a lot of money: Pre-sales, public sales (when tickets go on sale to the public) and new tickets added (this will be explained to you below).

Presales

As the word says, a pre-sale is a certain amount of tickets for a concert or an event that will be put for sale before the public sale starts, usually a few days earlier. Mostly these presales are organised for the fans who registered to a newsletter or mail service on the artist’s website. So of course, if you are a fan of a particular band or artist, then you should register to any newsletter or mail list available on their website in order to get any tour, ticket sale and presale info in real time. All touts do that, a professional tout is registered to hundreds of newsletters and mail lists, and even fan clubs. For some artists/bands, like for example The Rolling Stones, you have to pay an annual fee to register to their fan clubs. In this case you might not want to pay these fees, but if you do, you will be the first to receive the presale info for their next tour/concerts (a password or a special link) and buy good front seats. Well the tout (the professional one, following nowadays by more and more average Jo…) does it, he gets good seats and sell them to you for a lot of money simply because you did not want (or did not think) to pay the annual fees to the fan club… So free or annual fees, register to your favourite band’s newsletter, mail list or fan club now, and you won’t be missing (or paying a lot of money…) the next tour. FaceValueTicket.co.uk will provide as many presale’s info as possible, when and where, presale passwords, presale links, so if you are looking for a particular one, it is more than likely to be posted here… [4] Tickets Presale !

But there are also other sources offering concert & event presales. We could reveal them right here right now, but unfortunately this would be only good fortune for more of the average Jo (the pros already know these sources) who might be tempted to make a few quid, and add more Ebay touts in an already very very very long list, giving even less chance to real people to get tickets at the right price. Let’s face the reality, touting will never completely disappear, but what we can do is discourage as many people as possible to either abandon this route, or not taking it at all. All presales available will be posted here, on this blog. And each single post for each single presale for a particular artist or band will be more likely to be found by fans or/and normal people who just want tickets from the right source. Of course some of the touts will find them too, but they will have to compete, hopefully, with more and more real people and fans, forcing a lot of touts to give up…

Public sale

Yes that’s the tricky part for real people/fans. When concert tickets go on sale, everybody is there: fans, normal people, amateur and professional touts, even the so-called “premium tickets agencies” (legitimate touts touting under a limited company on their websites - I’ll tell you more about that below…), etc… A nightmare and it got worse for the past 2 years as more people are trying a carrier in touting, using Ebay as their working place (and since a year or so, more similar websites are growing like mushrooms in Autumn - For legal reason we cannot mention these sites, but if you do a quick search on [5] Google, you will find that there are quite a few other sites that are in fact exclusively for touts!). Obviously there is nothing to do against that, apart giving 1 or 2 tricks that touts use to everyone, to give normal people the same chance to get good seats/tickets (or any ticket at all). So there is one thing you should know (assuming you know when your concert will go on sale…):

*) Where to buy: You all know [6] Ticketmaster or/and [7] Seetickets, but there are more legitimate ticketing agencies than these only 2 (see the page [8] Buy Tickets). And also a lot of people do not think or forget (but NOT the touts) that some venues have their own box office online (see the page [9] Box Office Tickets). So the main problem is that most people only know about the 2 or 3 best known ticketing agencies, and when tickets go on sale, they only try one of them at the time. Not the tout…

The tout knows all ticketing agencies and box offices where tickets for a specific concert or event are going to be on sale. So when the tickets go on sale, he opens many windows on his computer, each of them with the sale page of each ticketing agency and box office that will sell these specific tickets. At the same time he refreshes them all until the first sale starts (for example there can be a few minutes difference between 2 ticketing agencies, Seetickets might start a sale at 8:58 and ticketmaster 9:01) and he tries as quickly as possible to buy, one ticketing agency or/and box office after another, increasing his chance to catch the best seats or/and buy more tickets than allowed (especially standing tickets). WELL simply do exactly the same! Find out a few days earlier about all sources where the tickets you want are going to be on sale (again this kind of info will be posted on [10] FaceValueTicket.co.uk - for each concert and event announcement posted here, we will provide all links to ticketing agencies and box offices that will have some tickets for sale). Before the sale starts, be ready by opening on your computer as many windows as many sources there are, refresh them all one after another until the first one starts, and continue do so with all sources. Believe me, you will see how this might well work for you as it does for the touts. And if more and more people manage to get tickets using the same tricks that touts do, then less and less people will have to buy on Ebay, forcing touts to reduce their prices and eventually loose some money, and slowly giving up. And less of them on Ebay means less of them trying to catch the best seats / tickets for the next public sale…

Sold out concerts / events - news tickets added

That’s the very simple fact that all touts know, but unfortunately not so many people from the general public. So tickets went on sale 10 minutes ago, you tried but did not manage to get any, and now it says SOLD OUT…. that’s when the majority of people go straight to Ebay and bids extremely high in auctions, in a desperate action, the ultimate way to get tickets for their favourite band… (PLEASE people, please DO NOT DO THAT, NEVER do that - if you are going to buy on Ebay anyway, do not rush, you are just wasting your money - More about this on page [11] Ebay Touts). Rubbish - I tell you right now, 95% of these so-called SOLD OUT gigs are simply NOT. To make it easier, I will give you a specific example.

In June 2007 Prince announced 21 dates at the O2 Arena in London. After a presale that was organised by O2, the first 14 dates went on sale to the public. No need to say that shortly afterwards it was SOLD OUT everywhere (well, at least that is what it said…). Tough everybody knew that 7 more dates were going to be added (the tour was announced everywhere as 21 nights in London), people as usual rushed to Ebay, where that same morning, about 200 or 300 pairs (only - yes only) of tickets appeared for sale. Everybody was bidding like crazy (you can’t blame them as it says sold out everywhere…), prices for the first pairs sold went up to 3 to 4 times the face value, for seats that were far to be the best, at the back of the lower tiers, even back upper tier seats were going for twice and more of the face value (I say it again and again, if you are going to buy on Ebay anyway, do not rush the first day bidding like crazy, prices always go down and in this perticular case, upper tier and lower seats were going for less than face value shortly afterwards because there were hundreds of them on Ebay - But see more about that on page [11] Ebay Touts). And of course, in July, a lot more tickets for all 21 dates went back on sale, in fact some of the best lower tier seats. 21 nights in London is a lot, a lot of tickets. Never, absolutely NEVER all these tickets will go on sale in one go. And this goes for all similar big tours like Prince. If the concert/tour is in months, like it usually is, please be patient, do not rush to Ebay or any other similar site, keep checking ticketing agencies and online box offices, register to their mailing lists or newsletter, etc… I can guarantee you that most of the time (for big concerts / tours, I would say about 98% chances that more tickets will be put back for sale in a later date…), some more tickets will be available… And the tout knows that, I am almost certain that the majority of these tickets added to the so-called sold out gigs are caught by the touts, because that is what they do all day (for the pros always, but also more and more the amateurs), they keep looking, searching for these tickets added. I am sure that I am not far wrong when I say that about 50% of tickets sold by touts are these new added tickets. Of course ! they are (almost) the only ones to know. At FaceValueTickets.co.uk we will also post when new tickets will be added. As soon as we get the info, we will provide the source and the link to where to find them.

“Premium tickets agencies”

At [13] Face value Ticket we call them the “legitimate touts”. To avoid any legal trouble, we cannot mention them in any way as technically and legally, they are not doing anything wrong. But you can judge by yourself.

So as usual, the same story… Did not get any tickets, sold out everywhere, etc… But you do not trust yourself to buy on Ebay. Instead you decide to buy some tickets on a nice website that looks very professional. In fact it looks so professional and official that you feel there extremely confident. Well, that is where you are wrong: all these websites are nothing else than big scale touts, some of them are simply crooks (read stories about Getmetickets, a company that was doing exactly that and ended in court: [14] Getmetickets). Their prices are even more expensive than on Ebay (some of these agencies actually also sell on Ebay), up to 10 times and more of the ticket’s face value. They do not have any relation with venues or concert / event promoters whatsoever, if it says “official” on their websites, this is just to fool you. And at the end, you might not even get any tickets at all…

So where are their tickets coming from?

Well exactly from where these tickets should have been available for you. They buy their tickets from presales, public sales and new added tickets, like any other tout, like any fan / people should be able to buy theirs. And yes, amazingly they also buy on Ebay…

I will give you an example, Prince tickets again: as I said above, it said sold out everywhere shortly after they went on sale. But on all these websites, there were apparently loads of tickets available (in fact there were some for sale before even tickets went on sale at all). Now don’t be fooled, all these agencies do NOT have ALL the tickets they are selling. If it gives a specific seat position, like BLOCK A2, ROW 3, then these seats are more likely to be tickets that they have booked during either the presale or when it went on sale to the public, like everybody else. But if it says FRONT BLOCKS or THIRD OF THE ARENA,… anything vague without giving any exact position of the seats, then it is guaranteed to be tickets that they simply do not have.

Where do they get them then? And you might even say, well as long as they get them at the end, that is all I want… Well again, that is where you are wrong. Not only you might never get your tickets (see again the [15] Getmetickets story), but you could have got these same tickets that you paid 3/4/5/… times the face value at the normal price very easily. For example Prince tickets had a face value of £31,21, these agencies were selling them (the ones they booked themselves and the ones they did not have) for £200 a piece. So you might have bought £200 for a ticket that they did not have, simply because they say that they are a premium agency, and that the price you pay is for the service of getting your tickets to a concert that was sold out. All you had to do is wait that more tickets got back for sale later on (if you had you would have got even better seats as all the best lower seats went for sale at that time) or, for this specific example, wait a bit that tickets prices went down A LOT on Ebay as there were so many people trying to make money by reselling Prince tickets on Ebay that there were simply too many tickets (in July, thousands and thousands were to be found on Ebay), they were all selling at lost. Well that is where your £200 Prince ticket came from: from the new added tickets that (of course!) went back for sale (of course it was not sold out, I told you above, it is NEVER SOLD OUT!) or on Ebay, yes, on Ebay. So you bought in June a “premium ticket” for £200 on a “premium tickets website” that bought this same ticket for £31.21 when new added tickets went put back for sale to the public in July or on Ebay to an “amateur-tout” most likely for less than £31.21… Simple is that! In fact these agencies are so happy that there are more and more people doing that on Ebay: more amateurs selling at lost, more profit for them. And even if they buy some for more money than the face value, it does not matter, they resell them for up to 10 times this same face value on their websites. And there you have also a chance of never getting your tickets at all, or, not the seats you were hoping for because they could not find any (because this happens sometimes…), so you got some far back in the arena (because that is the only ones they could find instead). And what are you going to do about it? Whom can you complain to? Some of these websites are not even registered in the UK… Nothing, there is nothing you can do about it, you are out of pocket, or you got crap seats paid for a lot of money, end of story. And the UK law lets you down, pathetic. No you are not to be blamed, you did not know how all this works. Well, if you are here now, it means that you have read this page (long page, you are very brave… or perhaps very frustrated?), so you know NOW!

The legislation in the UK is funny, I must say. When reselling football tickets is illegal, anyone can resell a concert ticket, and now anyone indeed do. If it was only a matter of a couple of touts about, it would not be too bad. But it got just ridiculous, it must be around 60% (if not more…) of concert tickets resold on Ebay, on “premium tickets agencies” websites and other sites made only for touting that seems to appear from nowhere since a year or two. But the government is not prepared to move in this matter(why?), the law does not change… so all is left to do is taking some action, this is what FaceValueTicket.co.uk is all about.

There is also one way to reduce, if not stop all this: DO NOT BUY FROM A TOUT !!!

If you have any quertion or query, please contact the blog admin: admin(at)facevalueticket.co.uk

The blog admin at Face value Ticket

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