Consumer group Which? has called on Oasis and Ticketmaster to 'do the right thing' and refund fans who paid higher prices for tickets due to dynamic pricing.
Tickets for the Oasis comeback tour were sold out in a matter of hours, with many fans not able to get tickets and others finding themselves presented with the opportunity to purchase more expensive ones only.
Standard tickets went on sale for around £150, but later in the day when some fans who'd been in the queue for hours finally got a chance to buy tickets they were told they'd have to spend more than double that.
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Prices rose to around £355 for a ticket, and Ticketmaster said that they don't set the prices as that's up to 'promoters and artists'.
Ticketmaster introduced dynamic pricing, which means the cost of a ticket can go up if there's lots of demand, in 2022.
Given that there was always going to be more people wanting to buy Oasis tickets than there were tickets available, lots of demand for the sale was practically a given.
Meanwhile, Oasis have said that they didn't know dynamic pricing was going to be used and they didn't set the ticket price.
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The band said in a statement: "It needs to be made clear that Oasis leave decisions on ticketing and pricing entirely to their promoters and management, and at no time had any awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used."
Which? has been investigating the matter and has been gathering screenshots from people who bought Oasis tickets, including ones which don't warn people that prices would increase while tickets were on sale.
Under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations (CPRs), traders must not mislead consumers with how prices are presented or leave out key pricing information that they might need to make an informed decision about their purchase.
The group said many fans weren't told that ticket prices had increased until they'd already tried to buy them at a standard price.
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They'll be sharing their findings with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which last week launched an investigation into Ticketmaster over the ticket sale.
Which? consumer law expert Lisa Webb said: "It seems extremely unfair that Oasis fans got up early and battled through the queues only to find that ticket prices had more than doubled from the originally advertised price.
"Which? believes that Ticketmaster’s ‘in demand’ pricing practices for Oasis tickets could have breached consumer law as it appears fans weren’t properly warned about the use of ‘in demand’ pricing until far too late in the purchase journey – leading to a nasty shock at the checkout.
"Oasis and Ticketmaster should do the right thing and refund fans who may have been misled into paying over the odds for tickets that would have been half the price just hours earlier."
A Ticketmaster spokesperson said: “Fans can resell their Oasis tickets at the full price they paid through Ticketmaster or Twickets.”
Topics: Money, Music, Oasis, Ticketmaster, UK News
Joe Harker