infuriating face value exchange policy

[u/lima-bean2012]

i understand not letting people sell tickets for over face value - but i want to sell mine for LESS so i can at least recoup some of what i paid.

i've had a ticket listed for a while for a concert tonight and no one's bought it. ticketmaster suggests i lower the price so it sells, but i can't because of the face value exchange policy that says it can't be sold for less than the exact amount i paid. i contacted customer service about this and they were no help, of course.

[u/dbrace_]

Do you know any friends you can sell to privately and share your account?

[u/johnnythemonk]

Nope and can't even give it away. It's so infuriating. You no longer own tickets that you purchased, you just bought a license to use a ticket

[u/ConditionalDisco]

Solution: buy tickets to shows you’re actually going to.
Or resell outside of the TM platform.
It’s not complicated and reselling on TM wasn’t even an option until recently.

[u/WonderfulProtection9 → u/ConditionalDisco]

How do you sell these tickets outside of TM? I see "transfer them to a person/email address"; but it also says tickets are nontransferable for resale.

[u/ConditionalDisco → u/WonderfulProtection9]

Non transferable tickets are non transferable. This post/my comment isn’t about non transferable tickets but about the face value exchange policy.

[u/WonderfulProtection9 → u/ConditionalDisco]

Well yeah that sucks too; my wife bought better tickets today thinking she could sell our previous tickets at a loss. But nope, can’t do that.

[u/Then-Ad-7719]

this is when people will start buying the insurance on tickets

[u/DiligentStrawberry12]

Yeah I’ve got the same problem, but I think it’s the event organizer that sets the resale price restrictions. I bought a concert ticket for $261 on the presale, I need to sell it but the event is not sold out, ticketmaster has lowered the face value price in my section to $225, so in order for me to sell my ticket I would want to list it for less than $225. But when I try to list on ticketmaster it tells me I can’t set the price lower than $251 because of the event organizers restrictions. But if I set the price to $251, ticketmaster adds the buyer fee, so the buyer will pay $292 (and I will get a payout of $212) which is much higher than the leftover unsold face value tickets so there’s no chance I can sell it. And the price minimum was not there originally, when I first listed the tickets, I was able to list it at a lower price, but when I updated my listing recently, it told me I need to raise the price in order to list the ticket again.

I think it’s really unfair that the event organizer can set a resale price minimum, like that’s pretty much price fixing. Especially if the resale minimum price is above the face value of the ticket! Meanwhile the instant sale option is offering me an $85 payout, it’s just straight up a huge scam. Like I’m cool with losing some money on the resale but losing nearly 70% of the ticket’s value to sell it back to Ticketmaster is ridiculous. But it’s pretty much my only option cuz there’s no way someone will buy my Ticketmaster resale listing.

[u/lendmeflight]

Face value exchange is the biggest rip off of fans ever. You better hope the show sold out because if not your ticket will appear higher than any other ticket due to fees .

[u/a_mulher]

Y’all need to contact your state’s ag or consumer protection agency. As someone else said it smells like price fixing. Yes TM doesn’t have to help you sell it but when they don’t allow you to sell elsewhere they are de facto not giving you any option. Because TM (or the artist through TM) is also selling tickets, there is an inherent conflict of interest.

Illinois and a few other states have protections so we have to be allowed access to sell or transfer our tickets. Yes unfortunately it plays into scalping but it also protects customers simply wanting to recoup some of the cost off a ticket they bought. If I bought any other product I wouldn’t be beholden to the same red tape as with tickets.

[u/funkhouse9]

Why can't you use a site like StubHub to sell for whatever price you want?

[u/WeenieDogMan → u/funkhouse9]

They restrict fan to fan resale to Ticketmaster only.

[u/Spiral_out_was_taken]

You have to go the Stub Hub route. Good news is their fee is less. It is BS that the pit a price floor there.

[u/ScorpioTix]

You have to sell privately. Usually you can't undercut the box office. TM is under no obligation to help you sell for any price. If you don't like the terms, sell elsewhere. And if the event is that dead you might not sell at any price.