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Home / Entertainment

$950 blown after child buys Ed Sheeran tickets on scalping site

By Otago Daily Times
Otago Daily Times·
17 May, 2017 05:00 PM2 mins to read

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Leah Harper said her daughter was only trying to help when she purchased the tickets online for an Ed Sheeran concert. Photo / File

Leah Harper said her daughter was only trying to help when she purchased the tickets online for an Ed Sheeran concert. Photo / File

The moral of this story is: "Don't leave your laptop with an 11-year-old".

Dunedin mother Leah Harper is more than $950 out of pocket after her daughter accidentally bought tickets to Ed Sheeran's Dunedin concert from a scalping website.

Ticketmaster put pre-sale tickets to the concert online at 2pm on Tuesday.

Harper said she had been logged on to her laptop for more than an hour, trying to buy four $159 tickets.

But at 3.20pm, the website was still processing her order and she had to leave to attend an appointment.

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She left the laptop in the care of her 11-year-old daughter.

"Nothing was coming up, so she decided to have a look and see if she could get tickets elsewhere.

"She typed in Ed Sheeran tickets and the Viagogo website popped up at the top of the list," said Harper.

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Viagogo is an online ticket marketplace for buying and selling tickets to live events.

"All of my details came up pre-existing in the computer as soon as she put my name in. She sort of assumed it was all good."

Long story short, she ended up with three tickets for $1223, which should have only cost $90 each, she said.

The money came out of her bank account immediately.

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Harper said her bank could not stop the transaction, so she made a number of phone calls and emails to the Viagogo website, asking for her money back.

"Viagogo emailed back saying the only way to get my money back was to re-list the tickets on their site and sell them again.

"That's appalling. It's really awful.

"If you tell them it's an 11-year-old child and they've made a mistake, there should be some comeback on this."

Harper said her daughter was distraught.

"She thought she was helping. She thought I'd be so excited.

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"But when I saw what had happened, I thought, oh no.

"The moral of the story is, don't leave your daughter with the laptop."

The Major Events Management Act 2007 makes it illegal to on-sell a tournament ticket for profit in New Zealand, and scalpers can be fined up to $5000.

However, it is restricted to major international events, such as the Rugby World Cup or Cricket World Cup.

The re-selling or scalping of tickets to concerts, entertainment events or one-off matches is a legal practice.

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