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2003 eamonn said: "Beating the touts for Glastonbury"

The quick sell out of Glastonbury has meant ticket shortages followed by touting. Touting is pretty bad normally but I think for an event that raises money for charity it is doubly reprehensible. I was trying to think of a few ways of getting back at the touts.

The glastonbury commercial manager said it was very unlikely they could cancel tickets that touts are selling. Only touting of football tickets is illegal.

There are a number of resellers - organisations that usually sell football packages/musicals/Paul Macartney tickets who are selling Glasto tix for anywhere between 200 and 300 VAT. They say they have small numbers of tickets but this claim could be to encourage demand. I reported these organisations to BBC Watchdog but haven't got any reply from them yet. It would be great to stop their ticket allocations becuase I bet they number in the thousands.

I don't mind people selling a couple of tickets on ebay but when you look you'll find that there are a fair few people selling between 4 and more tickets. This is not fair in my book so I tried to get the contact details for them - some have an email address which leads to a personal website. If you ask them a question you usually get a reply from their personal email address and in one or two cases if you look at their feedback you'll see ebayers who were dissatisfied with the seller from previous transactions who are more than happy to supply the contact details. I've no idea what to do with these details. It looks as if it will be next to impossible to really stop these tickets being allocated (EBay refused to stop the auctions though they did take some action for Radiohead a while ago). Anyway I mailed one seller who was selling 8 saying I didn't think it was right to make money out of Glastonbury and this is the reply I got


How about I give you a WARNING... which is this, People like YOU Make 
me sick.. A. You;re not the Police, nor should you act like one.. even if 
you provide Glastonbury with the URL Details you CAN'T take my tickets 
qway, They're not through Glastonbury DIRECTLY.. FOOL! Here's a tip
A. DON'T EVER Email me again with this jibbereish, coz you're blokced 
from sending me emails.
B. IF YOU WANT TO BE A POLICEMAN GO TO SCHOOL TO DO IT.
C. You're RUINING THE EBAY SYSTEN TOO, YOU AND YOUR FRIDNS, 
ALL THESE "FALSE BIDDER" will get their just desserts, YOU'RE FAKE 
BIDS ARE RECORDED AND SO TOO ARE YOUR RECORDS AND YOU 
WILL BE PROSECUTED IF BIDS YOU PEOPLE MAKE AREN'T FULFILLED 
WITH PAYMENTS..

SO YOU WANNA WASTE YOUR TIME AND AGAIN YOU FUCKER.. KEEP 
TRYING ME!

So there's a bit of aggro out there. Anyway I don't know why I'm recounting all this, I can't do anything except hassle the touts and it takes too much time. And I'm tired.