Paperless Tickets Flourish Despite 'Grandma Problem'

Hugh Pickens writes "Is a concert ticket a piece of property that its holder has the right to buy and sell as he sees fit, or is it merely a seat-rental contract subject to restrictions determined by its issuer? The Washington Post reports that in an effort to thwart scalpers and dampen ticket reselling on the so-called secondary market, musicians as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Miley Cyrus, and Metallica have adopted 'paperless ticketing' for some or all of the seats at their live shows. Ticket issuers Ticketmaster and Veritix tout paperless tickets as a way to eliminate worries about lost, stolen, or counterfeit tickets, and to banish long will-call lines. But paperless tickets aren't really tickets at all, but essentially personal seat reservations, secured electronically like airline tickets. Fans buy tickets with a credit card and must then go to the venue with the same credit card and a photo ID to gain admittance. The problem is that Ticketmaster's paperless tickets can't be transferred from a buyer to a second party. The inability to pass along a seat creates what has become known in the industry as the 'grandma problem': it's almost impossible for a grandma living at one end of the country to buy a paperless ticket to giver to a grandchild living at the other end. Without the ability to transfer virtual tickets, brokers and dealers fear being run out of business, and consumers have a harder time selling unwanted tickets. 'People should be free to give away or sell their tickets to whomever they want, whenever they want,' says Gary Adler, a Washington attorney who represents the National Association of Ticket Brokers. 'An open market is really best for consumers.'"

Comments

Re:Limited Options

[sammyF70]

I agree with you that the GP's "rich boy" call was out of place, but so is your "change your life" argument. You can work your ass off and still not make enough money to get past the "working to survive" stage, and you can be a lazy asshole and be rich like hell. It's not as if poor people are actively choosing to be poor or don't try to have enough to pay for luxury goods (in this case concert tickets). Generally it's a matter of chance and circumstances which leads either way, with, of course some personal work involved (if you don't try chances are you won't succeed neither ... although even THAT is no absolute).

Add to that the disappearing middle class, which mean most people fall into either really piss poor or fuckingly well off and you have your reason why many ressent people talking about money as if it was something everybody has. It IS galling when you tried all your life to achieve some financial success, for some reason didn't succeed (accidents, bad timing, plain bad luck ...), and someone comes along who might or might not have worked at least as much as you feel you did who basically tells you "I was lucky, It's completely normal and if you weren't then I despise you (change your life!)"

Sadly many who were successful just forget or ignore how much luck brought them to this point and how fast things can change for the worst and favor their ego instead . Humans being human, poor people, especially those who are really trying to better their lot, also forget how fast a lucky break might come, and don't reflect whether they would react similarly if they came to money eventually (although going from rich to poor is *a lot* easier than the other way around)

I was at both end of the spectrum and I'm currently on welfare, but at least things seems to look slightly up (aka. I might have enough to survive AND pay the rent), so I think I'm relatively well qualified to talk about it ;)

This isn't a personal attack by the way. I'm just answering your question about "why does mentioning the fact that one has money produce so much hate"

Re:Limited Options

[sammyF70]

whilst people making $150k/year will strongly support changing the economical and legislative framework to keep as much of their money as possible, no matter whether the taxes they would have to pay would help people in need who won't ever be able to make $150k a year due to illness or lack of education. Now ... who do you think has the better leverage on the framework?