Beware Michael Jackson ticket touts

Tickets to Michael Jackson's summer residency at London's O2 sold out in record time. But fans should be wary of paying over the odds for tickets or buying them from unofficial sources.

Michael Jackson's This Is It tour has become the fastest selling tour in history. But Jacko fans should watch out for touts selling over-priced tickets - or tickets that don't even exist.

Although tickets for the 10-date tour only officially went on sale at 7am this morning (Friday), "presale" tickets for about half the seats sold out on Tuesday. Organisers then added another 11 dates that Jackson would perform at the O2 arena this summer and later announced that the superstar singer would play a total of 45 dates in London, stretching into 2010.

Presale tickets

Fans had to register with tour organiser AEG Live for a chance to join the presale and were sent a code which they then had to enter onto the Ticketmaster.co.uk website in order to be in with a chance of buying tickets. However unprecedented demand for tickets - priced between £50 and £75 - meant the website crashed and some fans were unable to complete their purchase.

Several fans here in the lovemoney.com office were frustrated at the way the booking system worked, saying it seemed to be geared to selling the most expensive tickets first.

"You select your ticket preference and then wait in a queuing system. Often, after waiting 15 minutes or so, it would tell you no tickets were available for that night and send you to the beginning of the process again," said a disgruntled colleague. "I feel the whole process could have been completed in one session, presenting you with alternative date and ticket options if your first choice was rejected. You have no idea how many tickets are left throughout the whole process or if you are just wasting your time."

Auctions and reselling sites

Yet, despite the problems real fans had buying tickets, within hours of the presale going live tickets for the shows appeared on ebay and reselling sites at several times their face value.

On Thursday evening ebay had listings for tickets with "buy it now" prices for anything from £399 for a pair of standard tickets to £5,000 for two "Thriller hospitality" tickets which had a face value of £795 each.

Elsewhere on the web soldouteventickets.com were selling tickets with a face value of £50 for £247.50 and those with a face value of £65 for £357.50 - a 450% mark up.

Theonlineticketshop.com was selling standard tickets for between £295 and £1,150 while getmein.com was advertising tickets for £273.90 plus a massive £46.69 "processing fee".

The best way to buy tickets

Your best bet when buying tickets to concerts, theatre performances and sporting events is to buy them from an official ticket agent such as Ticketmaster or See Tickets or direct from the venue itself. Ideally the ticket seller or agent should be a member of The Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers (STAR) which has a code of practice for members to follow and a procedure for dealing with complaints. Make sure you know the contact details of your ticket seller in case there are any problems and you need to get in touch with them.

Ticket sellers to avoid

Secondary ticket sellers usually buy hard-to-find tickets and sell them on for more than the original ticket face value. So-called fan-to-fan exchanges such as Seatwave and Getmein enable individuals to sell on tickets they have already bought. Individuals set the prices for the tickets, not the sites, so you will probably end up paying more than the ticket's face value. Some people make a living out of this - the touts that used to hang around outside sold-out venues buying and selling tickets have simply moved online.

Chances are that if you buy tickets from a secondary ticket agent you could get a genuine ticket to see the gig or sporting event, albeit paying well over the odds for the privilege. Some critics say this means real fans are denied to the chance to see their heroes and touts are cashing in on fans' devotion.

But consumer watchdog Which? warns that there is no guarantee that secondary sellers actually have the tickets they say they do. It says consumers have fewer rights if they buy tickets from a private or secondary ticket seller. Official ticket sellers only have to act on complaints about tickets bought directly from them, not from third parties.

Some more unscrupulous sites simply advertise tickets that don't exist. Fraudulent websites are on the up with some 30,000 people being fleeced last year according to the Guardian. It ran an investigation which revealed that scamsters set up fake websites to sell tickets to the V, Leeds and Reading festivals last year.

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