VIAGOGO FOUND GUILTY OF MISLEADING CUSTOMERS IN AUSTRALIAN COURT.

Viagogo are fighting multiple court cases all around the world as we speak. Today they where dealt a massive blow here in Australia as they have been found guilty of misleading customers.

The ACCC, the government body for consumers, first filed a complaint against Viagogo in 2017, though they’re far from the only company who have been criticised for helping hike ticket prices. This suit gathered even more traction when it gained heavy support from the music industry.

Peking Duk, The Rubens and Gang of Youths have all been very outspoken about their discussed with Viagogo ‘cheating’ their fans. Jess Krishnaswamy, co-founder of touring company BBE and FOMO Festival told Music Junkee that the false tickets were one of the biggest issues they had with putting on events.

“We had probably 500 to 800 kids turn up on the day who had paid in excess of $400 for fake FOMO tickets, or for a FOMO ticket that someone had already used,” she told Music Junkee.

Krishnaswamy also said that BBE and FOMO dealt with around 2,000 inquiries about fake tickets during the 2018 tour — around 5 to 10 percent of the total number of available tickets.

Today, the federal court determined that Viagogo mislead consumers by using the word ‘official’, and also by including false claims on their site about events having “less than 1 percent of tickets remaining”, which creates an unwarranted frenzy of punters. They were also found to have not presented their “extraordinarily high booking fees” upfront during May and June 2017, where fees could add a 27.6 percent additional cost to tickets.

This is a land make decision in stamping out scalping in Australia and could be used as a precedent around the world.