What's the story... with dynamic ticket pricing?

Hands up (and lighters in the air) if you tried to buy Oasis tickets at the weekend. 

The Masterplan was of reasonably priced tickets and touts being frozen out, but, Little By Little, we saw this plan Slide Away as the reality looked more like long online queues, people being thrown out of the system, and higher than expected prices to see these Rock ‘n’ Roll Stars.

After queuing for several hours online, many fans have complained that the tickets they were offered ended up costing substantially more than the prices that had been advertised originally. In some cases more than double or triple the price they expected to pay! That's a lot of Cigarettes and Alcohol!

After waiting several hours (feeling they'd have to Live Forever in an interminable queue), many fans were given a short window of time to decide if they were willing to Acquiesce and shell out, or hang up and simply Look Back In Anger. Some Might Say most of their fans were left Crying their Heart Out. It seems like the whole thing has been a bit of a Digsy's Dinner (ok, that one was bad, but Don't Go Away).

Ticketmaster has defended its dynamic pricing strategy, “Whatever”, they said, these practices are common in the sector. You'll just have Roll with It, they said… (ok, no they Definitely Maybe didn't say any of that).

I think I've got all the puns our of my system. Now that I've Let It Out, let's get serious for a minute.

Let's shiiiiaaiiiiin a light on the issues

Listen Up. Dynamic pricing is a pricing strategy in which businesses set flexible prices for products or services based on current market demands. The price changes are carried out by software which collects data and uses algorithms to adjust pricing according to business rules. 

So is dynamic pricing legal?  In principles, yes. Businesses can effectively charge what they like and what the market will bear. But that doesn't mean that the law doesn't have something to say about dynamic pricing techniques.

It can be a breach of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (and soon, the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act) if a trader materially misleads consumers regarding the price of goods and services, if that causes the average consumer to take a different ‘transactional decision’. 

In this case, many consumers might not have joined the queue had they known that the price would have increased by the time they were able to purchase, and many fans could not afford the increased price.  Many are Married with Children, and others live Half The World Away, and may have been concerned about the price of accommodation, on top of ticket prices - but that's another issue altogether!

Many tickets are popping up on resale sites, meaning that genuine fans are unable to buy tickets which may have been purchased by bots. When the DMCC Act was passing through parliament, the Lords wanted greater protections for the secondary ticketing marketing.  The previous government refused, but the Labour government has indicated that it does intend to review the challenge of over priced secondary ticket sales.

So, have we heard the last of this?  No way sis.  D'you Know What I Mean?