Like it or loathe it, ticket scalping is at times a necessary evil. The vast majority of us work when tickets to live music events go on sale, making it near impossible to snap-up a stub to a hugely anticipated show, but here in Australia there’s always been a more reliable fallback, Gumtree, however the online buy/sell marketplace has just made it a hell of a lot harder to buy tickets to gigs.
Gumtree Australia have removed the ability for website users to post “Wanted” advertisements, which for the thousands that have used this function, is a much more assured way of acquiring a ticket as opposed to trawling through multiple “For Sale” ads and e-mailing, calling and texting in the hopes of scoring a ticket.
Users are now being forced to post advertisements in the for sale section with the headline “Wanted” however as this is now against Gumtree policy, the website are monitoring these ads to ensure that no “Wanted” advertsiements of any sort may remain on the website for long.
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Gumtree have commented on their decision to remove the super handy option, writing on the website, “We’ve decided to remove this option as feedback from our community revealed that it was causing confusion and frustration whilst they were trying to locate tickets.”
In addition to this they comment, “There have also been instances where ticket scalpers and scammers were targeting people looking for tickets. Since this is an exciting moment in the buying experience especially for concert goers – scalpers were targeting vulnerable buyers and not delivering on the promise. In the hope of reducing the bad experience that you might experience in the ticket buying process we’ve decided to remove the “wanted” ticket option.”
This news hits pretty hard for Aussie live music goers who are smack-bang in the middle of summer, aka festival season, the time of year where we an enormous amount of international acts tour our shores. We hate to to be fear mongering, but buying tickets to the likes of the upcoming Golden Plains festival is going to cause headaches for a lot of desperate and hopeful punters.
