It would be great on a weekender if I could pay for someone to sleep for me not with me
from accusations of criminal to complete silence.
Did I break the law or not?
OK, I've had a chance to look this up.
The answer is in the Price Indications (Resale of Tickets) Regulations 1994.
The practice of reselling tickets in the course of a business is controlled by the Regulations, which were made under the Consumer Protection Act of 1987.
They make it unlawful to sell tickets in the course of a business without giving full details of the original ticket - price, terms and conditions, restrictions etc etc - so that if (an example given in the OFT web site) you are offered a Rod Stewart ticket for £359 you can decide whether you really want to pay over £300 above the face-value. (There's a school of thought that says if you are seriously thinking about going to a Rod Stewart concert, the arithmetic is probably beyond you in any case; naturally I would not subscribe to that view.)
So Martin's plan in the original post would have been criminal, but what you did would not.
1. There will, of course, be arguments as to whether the reselling was 'in the course of business'; arguably if it is done more than a couple of times you're in the firing line; if no profit is made, that would weigh against a 'business' interpretation.
2. There are separate and more restrictive rules about reselling football tickets, which I haven't looked up.
Thanks Barry,
Now I'm going to book another 2+2 for BlazeIV.
That takes me to more than a couple of times.
In the sense that people buy tickets, then sell them on for the same price but without the accommodation element - this forum is full of them.
The fair price would take into account that the seller gets more chalet space and someone else gets less. Looking at JA's price list, this would amount to £10-30 off each ticket's face value, with the buyer nominally distributing this amongst the people they end up sharing with.
Probably, yes.
If he's reselling the tickets at the price for which he purchased them, it's unlikely to be 'in the course of business', isn't it? Not impossible, but unlikely. Plus other circumstances - such as sharing the chalet with the purchasers - would also undermine it.
I think though, especially at this late stage, that its simply cos people can't go, have a spare ticket, but their chalet mates don't want to share with a random stranger.
I know certainly when we had a spare ticket due to someone not able to go my first approach was to see if any friends wanted to take the place and share with us. The 'ticket without accomodation' was a second choice rather than share with a random stranger - though in the end we sorted it out directly with JA.
From what you have said above, it would not be criminal if one declared the original price and then went on to sell at a higher price - as in your Rod Stewart example.
So therefore in this case my original "plan" or as I put it "Just a thought...." it would be legal, as long as the original price was declared etc.
I know a friend of mine bought 2 tickets for him and me to go to the rugby world cup final in 2003 on ebay - as it was the only way we were going to get tickets... I am hoping that was legal, we were aware the original ticket price was less than what we had to pay to get a place in the stands.
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