Scam Alert! Have You Ever Been Ripped Off Buying Concert Tickets Online to a Classical Music Perf.?

In our online business, we often have to deal with scammers and con artists of various types. I am alert and vigilant for fraud most of the times I am using the Internet. Before I joined Wealthy Affiliate, I explored a few other companies offering Affiliate marketing training, but didn’t pay a penny to them because… they just didn’t smell (sound, look) well; my intuition told me not to join them. Later, I learned from a WA member who joined one of these companies before he found WA, that in order to move on with them, he had to pay over 10 thousand dollars in all upsells they offered. But without purchasing other products, he could not move on in working on his business -- that’s the way they organized their training and services. So, I was right not to join that company whose initial fee was only $99.00 And once again, my intuition suggested joining Wealthy Affiliate, and here I am two years later, still enjoying the journey!
But when it comes to classical music, to me there is nothing more pure and beautiful. The words ‘fraud’ or ‘scam’ don’t enter my mind. This time, while buying concert tickets online, I lost my vigilance.

Daniil Trifonov, pianist.

There is a new star in classical music - Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov. Daniil is a winner of many very prestigious music competitions. In 60th Grammy Award 2017, he won Best Classical Instrumental Solo Prize. In 2016, he won Gramophone’s Artist of the Year award. In the season of 2010-2011, he was only 20 years old. That’s when he took the third prize in Warsaw’s Chopin Competition, First Prize in Tel Aviv’s Rubinstein Competition, and First Prize and Grand Prix in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition. Two years later in 2013, he was awarded the Franco Abbiati Prize for Best Instrumental Soloist by Italy’s leading music critics.

A friend of mine informed me that Daniil Trifonov is going to perform in Boston this April. He’ll be playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelsons. My husband and I discussed that 3 of us, including our son, who is the same age as Daniil Trifonov and also a professional pianist, only blind and autistic, should definitely attend this concert. But, we haven't decided on the details: which day out of 3 available we’ll go, what seats/ ticket price we should choose, etc. So, a few days ago we realized that the concert is coming soon, but we still didn’t purchase the tickets.

Buying Concert Tickets Online

It was late in the evening, close to midnight, when my husband and I got together at the computer and searched for the tickets to Boston Symphony Hall for Daniil Trifonov’s concert. I can’t remember exactly what keywords we used, but in the Search Results page, we followed one of the top links thinking that we are entering the Boston Symphony Orchestra site. As I said, I lost my watchfulness and didn’t even look at the address bar. And even if I did, it’s pretty common that a venue outsources their ticket sales to a third party. This is what the page looked like:
Nothing other than URL suggested that we were in a wrong place.

We found the tickets we were looking for - only a few left! The price was close to the highest edge: $123.00 per ticket, but we had to accept it because less than a month was left until the concert, and the artist was very popular. While we were choosing our tickets, the pop-up in the upper right corner of the screen suggested that somebody just purchased several tickets for this concert. As soon as we chose the tickets, the countdown timer came up giving us less than 10 minutes to complete our purchase because of the high demand. This, of course, aggravated the situation: we were rushed, we were not given time to think and double-check.

Once we submitted the payment, we received the full cost breakdown on the screen and the total was $467.20!

Tickets Purchased: 3
Price per ticket: 123.00
Ticket Cost: 369.00
Booking Fee: 92.25 <$30.75 per ticket! -- J.S.>
Shipping Fee: 5.95 <for electronic delivery! -- J.S.>
Buyer VAT:
Buyer Total: 467.20

Only then we looked up at the URL: www.viagogo.com
Do you see their logo on either screenshot above?

Is Viagogo a scam?

I’d say, ABSOLUTELY!

No order cancellation was available even in seconds after we submitted the order (not surprisingly, right?) Viagogo provides “sell tickets” option on their website. The sale price, of course, does not include their larcenous fees, which means that we could sell for $369.00 the tickets we purchased a second ago for $467.20 - so, that they could sell them again and rob another victim for another $100.00. No way!

Viagogo provides customer service phone number on their site, but when we called, the automated answering system offered only 2 options: buy tickets & sell tickets.

There was an option to send a message to Viagogo Customer Service from their website, but no option to send a copy to myself. We’ve sent them a message requesting cancellation and full refund, and I just copied and saved the text for myself in order to keep proper documentation for the future reference.

I also called my credit card bank, and they suggested filing a dispute once the transaction is posted. They mentioned that viagogo is known for having many disputes filed in their name.

I did receive email responses to every message I sent to viagogo. However, I believe that there was no real person behind those replies. Their first email response was “in answer to your question regarding the price that you paid for your tickets, we have provided a detailed breakdown of your purchase price…” - the question I never asked. But, it was good to receive the written breakdown because since seeing it on their website after transaction, it was not provided anywhere else.

I wrote back from my Outlook email account saying that I never asked that question and included the text of my original message in that reply (!!!) I repeated that I am demanding cancellation of my order and full refund and explained the reasons in details. Their second response was: “Unfortunately, we are unable to offer you a refund or exchange for your tickets. viagogo is a secondary marketplace which allows customers to buy and sell tickets. At the time you purchased your tickets, as well as guaranteeing your purchase, we also guaranteed the seller that they will be paid for their sale. Therefore, the best and only option is to re-list them for sale.” They assured me that they will not charge me any seller’s fees (that’s not the same fees they’ve taken from me already at the time of purchase!). I replied once again encouraging them to do the right thing: return the money to my credit card. The next response I received was identical to the previous one. Perhaps, their bot ran out of new message texts.

In any case, I needed this documentation to support my dispute for the charge at my bank, which I filed yesterday.

I’ve done just a little bit of research on viagogo afterwards (I’m too sick of them to do more!). Viagogo is an International company with their headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Viagogo is operating since 2006 and its founder and CEO is American businessman Eric Baker.

There are numerous reports on viagogo’s unethical and illegal activities. I found viagogoclassaction.com website and Viagogo Class Action Lawsuit Facebook page: both seem inactive since 2018 - I’m not sure why. I also found and joined the “Victims of Viagogo” Facebook group, which has 9,400 members and is still active. This group urges its members NOT to resell tickets through viagogo and thus not support their “pyramid” selling cycle. That call perfectly correlates with my own decision.

My husband and I started communication with viagogo immediately after submitting the order. The email invitation to download our tickets came only 20 hours later (the next day). They must have worked hard on electronic delivery to justify the $5.95 shipping fee. ;) We never created an account with viagogo: at the time of our purchase they requested my email address, but the password was optional - so, I didn’t create one. I never even clicked on the link to view or download these tickets. Some people report that the tickets they purchased through viagogo were not even valid. We’ll never know whether ours were valid, and I am not curious to find out…

Instead, my husband went to the real Boston Symphony Orchestra website and purchased the same tickets again for the same row KK, only this time, it cost him $65 per ticket (not $123.00 as the ticket price was listed at viagogo’s!) and $19.50 booking fee for all three tickets -- the total of $214.50

The bottom line...

1. Viagogo is a fraudulent business:
   • Their website does not display viagogo logo in the header or a sidebar of each page. It purposely masks the fact that the visitors are not on the authentic site of the venue they are looking to attend
   • It rushes visitors during the check-out process with the count-down timer and pop-up messages.
   • It does NOT display either breakdown or total purchase price confirmation BEFORE the payment is submitted.
   • Viagogo’s ticket prices BEFORE any fees applied are almost DOUBLE of the original value.
   • They charge $5.95 shipping fee for electronic tickets.
   • When calling viagogo customer service number on the phone, there is no option to speak with a customer service representative or file a complaint.
   • The “sell tickets” option on their website offers viagogo’s original overpriced amount paid for the tickets minus all viagogo larcenous fees.
   • When contacting viagogo customer support through their website, there is no option to send a copy of the message to self and thus keep proper documentation on communication with the company.
   • The original customer’s communication message is not included either in auto-confirmation email that the message was received, nor in later correspondence.
   • The Customer Service responses are generic and do not address the actual issue.
   • The responses to customers’ issues seem to be auto-generated as they repeat themselves word to word, which no human would do.

Thank you!

P.S. viagogo sells tickets to all kind of music concerts, festivals, and sports events. I'd like to make aware as many people as possible of their fraudulent business. Please use your affiliate link to share this post in your social networks, and possibly link it from your website if your niche is in "entertainment", "sports events" or something else relevant to tickets sales and viagogo's scam.