UPDATE: Viagogo Responds After Australian Musicians Campaign To Have The Company Banned
ORIGINAL STORY: More Aussie music heavyweights have joined the war against controversial ticket resale website Viagogo.
Tash Sultana, Laneway Festival and more have thrown their weight behind an ongoing campaign to have the Swiss-based ticketing company booted from Australia.
First up, Tash has taken to Facebook with a fiery statement denouncing the organisation.
Posting a photo of a shirt emblazoned with the words “Fuck Viagogo”, she writes:
“Viagogo are a piece of shit company that sell my tickets for over 3 times the actual price to my fans. It’s not just me it’s affecting, it’s pretty much affecting most Aussie artists. Everybody is working their ass off to achieve their dreams and then you get a bunch of scum bags like these guys who will try multiply your dollar to desperate fans”
The team behind Laneway have also had a crack. Taking to Instagram, they write:
“We know many of our fans have had negative experiences with buying festival & gig tickets through viagogo. We do our best to warn people about the dangers of buying over-priced and often fraudulent tickets from third party sites like this, but now we have a chance to make a real difference – an opportunity to eradicate this business from Australia for good!”
It comes hot on the heels of Sydney rockers Gang Of Youths firing up at Viagogo for ripping off their fans, calling the company “one of the most disgraceful and disruptive scams our live industry has faced in recent years”.
Together, these heavy hitters of Aussie music are asking punters to email in their own examples and experiences of being ripped off by the ticket reseller to stopviagogo@lunaticnentertainment.com by tomorrow, Wednesday, 28th November.
They’re intending to submit the documentation as part of a Labor Party campaign to have Viagogo shut down.
Viagogo — which last year won an award for being “as reliable as a scalper in a back alley” — is routinely used by scalpers to sell overpriced tickets, while charging exorbitant fees in the process.
The company has previously been taken to court by The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), after it received more than 400 complaints about the organisation in one year.
