Ticket scalpers: savior or scammer?
By Sunny SUN
Wang Zihan stared at her phone screen and sighed helplessly, “I've been cheated again.”
Just a few minutes ago, she just made a transfer on Weibo to a scalper through Alipay who claimed to have tickets for the last performance of De Yunshe. But when she sent another message to this person, she found that his Weibo account had been canceled.
“I transferred 300 yuan to him with a fluke, but now he is out of my touch,” she said.
Not only Ms Wang, but many fans will also regard scalpers as the last straw when they can’t get the tickets through official channels. But this illegal channel has also made fans lose a lot of money.
Cassie Zhang said once she bought concert tickets from scalpers, she originally agreed to 4,000 yuan to buy a seat in the first row, but after entering, she realized the seat was in the sixth row. When she asked the scalpers about the situation, she got a reply that she could get a first-row seat for an additional 6,000 yuan.
“It is common for scalpers to rely on having tickets and raise the price. Although you do not buy, there are others to buy, considering the limited amounts of tickets,” she said.
(Scalpers will update a variety of ticket information in their Wechat account, including concert tickets, star activities such as visitation quota.
In addition to concert tickets, scalpers will also sell some internal admission quotas for the program recording or star's business activities. This part requires fans to take a greater risk.
Ms Zhang said that this part of the quota is obtained by the personal relationship between the scalpers and the program staff or on-site security, which is different from the computer registration of official participant's identity information.
“There are even some so-called admission quotas where scalpers take you over the fence or through a small hole to get in, which is very dangerous,” She added.
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Wang Tutu bought entry slots to celebrity events from scalpers but found it was a scam, “I didn't expect the entrance quota purchased for several thousand dollars turned out to be some people on-site to try to take me breaking into the recording site.”
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Later, she failed to go to the event site, and the deposit that she paid to scalpers could not be claimed back.
“Scalpers usually delete you when you ask her for money, cutting off your channel to contact him,” she said.
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Source: Idol Producer, Produce 101, Youth With You, CHUANG 2019, Youth With You 2, CHUANG 2020, CHUANG 2021
But even with such risks, Ms Wang said some fans still seek the help of scalpers. It is because that they can buy a series of personal information about the star from scalpers, such as the star's ID information. At the same time, scalpers will also provide temporary electronic boarding cards to help fans across the border smoothly and send the star to the boarding gate.
“This service is very popular among the fans who like to follow the stars offline and get close to them,” Amy said.
She once bought 500 celebrity ID numbers from scalpers for 88 yuan. With this information, she can easily know the location of the flight or hotel booked by the star and then go to the scene to wait for them in advance.
Later, I pretended to be a fan and added the scalpers' WeChat that Amy recommended to me. Then I specifically asked him about the e-boarding card service.
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According to the scalper, I can get this electronic boarding card by spending 200 yuan and providing him with my personal document information.
“This electronic boarding card just lets you smoothly go through customs, so that you can send stars all the way to the plane. But you can not get on it. Normally you can't go through security without a ticket, but with this electronic boarding card, you can get in,” he said.
And in the communication process, scalper repeatedly said their electronic boarding card has no problem, and they have internal cooperation with airlines.
But later, I learned from the airline customer service, each passenger only has one boarding pass. Boarding pass information and aircraft seats are one-to-one correspondence. This "electronic boarding pass" is tampered with by "scalpers" or others and may be used for customs clearance but not for boarding.
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The service provided by scalpers is harmful to the aviation management order.
​Yu Feng
a law professor at East China Normal University, specializing in entertainment law in China
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He also proposed a management approach is to establish a list of defaulters, “Put those who repeatedly rely on the ‘electronic boarding pass’ through customs but do not board the plane into the list of defaulters, and ban them from flying.”
“Rational supporting the idols is the beginning of reducing fans being cheated,” he added.