Oasis fans have been expressing buyers’ regret after shelling out hundreds of pounds for the band’s reunion gigs amid a row over ‘dynamic pricing’ – with one telling of digging into his overdraft after being landed with £1,400 costs.
Hundreds of people have now officially complained about how tickets were advertised after prices for the comeback tour soared when going on sale on Saturday.
And experts today suggested thousands of people were ‘misled’ as the Ticketmaster system pushed up the prices due to the huge demand.
After some fans were left shocked by standard tickets more than doubling from £148 to £355 on Ticketmaster due to demand, the Culture Secretary pledged to look into the use of surge pricing in a forthcoming Government review of the secondary gig sales market.
Many fans also missed out on the reunion tour tickets as they battled with website issues, and being mislabelled as bots, before Oasis announced all 17 shows in the UK and Dublin had sold out.
Guardian journalist Tom Halliday paraphrased a lyric from Oasis hit Cigarettes And Alcohol as he reflected on his ticket purchases: ‘Was it worth the aggravation?’
He told of receiving a sobering alert from his bank after splashing out a four-figure sum on four standing tickets for one of their gigs in Heaton Park, Manchester.
He said: ‘The overdraft alert from my bank this morning reminded me that I had chosen the latter: £1,423.55 for four “in-demand standing” tickets – of which £73.55 is service charges and processing fees.
‘The total, including insurance, came to a stomach-churning £361.13 per ticket. That’s the same price as Glastonbury festival and more expensive than four nights in Sharm El Sheikh.’
Social media users also shared their dismay after committing to tickets despite prices surging far higher than originally expected.
Danilo Rocha told how he wanted to resell his tickets after buying them, posting to Ticketmaster’s account on X, formerly Twitter: ‘Why can’t I put my tickets on the market place?
‘I was able to get 2 tickets, but later came the regret to have paid over 100% of the listed price. Your dynamic pricing sucks!’
A different X user wrote: ‘May have just seriously overpaid for Oasis Tickets in Dublin.’
And another shared how they felt ‘total regret and doubt’ after paying hundreds of pounds for a Dublin ticket – but hoped to ‘pay off a little every week over next 12 months and should be OK’.
The ticketing approach was condemned today by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, who told how one of their members queued for five hours before being charged £348 for a standing ticket at Wembley when he had expected to pay £151.
Sylvia Rook, the institute’s lead officer for fair trading, said: ‘Whilst dynamic pricing is an accepted practice for holidays, flights and taxis, the difference here is that consumers are informed of the price before they decide to make a purchase/
In this case, the public were given a price for tickets, and were not informed until they finally got to the front of the queue, that the price had increased.
‘This undoubtedly meant that many consumers have overreached and ended up spending much more than they originally intended. Many other consumers ended up disappointed after deciding not to proceed to pay the vastly increased prices.
‘It is a breach of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 if a trader 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 would 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.’
Other international dates are still to be announced, but the PA news agency reported this afternoon that no more UK shows are expected to be added to their tour.
Following the ticket furore, the Advertising Standards Authority has received 450 complaints about Ticketmaster adverts for the Oasis gigs.
A spokesperson for the UK’s regulator of advertising said the complainants argue that the adverts made ‘misleading claims about availability and pricing’.
They added: ‘We’re carefully assessing these complaints and, as such, can’t comment any further at this time.
‘To emphasise, we are not currently investigating these ads.’
Ticketmaster said it does not set prices and its website says this is down to the ‘event organiser’ who ‘has priced these tickets according to their market value’.
Bands have been urged to oppose dynamic pricing of concert tickets – with the concept previously criticised by artists such as The Cure frontman Robert Smith.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy earlier released a statement calling the inflated selling of Oasis tickets ‘incredibly depressing’.
She said: ‘After the incredible news of Oasis’ return, it’s depressing to see vastly inflated prices excluding ordinary fans from having a chance of enjoying their favourite band live.
‘This Government is committed to putting fans back at the heart of music. So we will include issues around the transparency and use of dynamic pricing, including the technology around queuing systems which incentivise it, in our forthcoming consultation on consumer protections for ticket resales.
‘Working with artists, industry and fans we can create a fairer system that ends the scourge of touts, rip-off resales and ensures tickets at fair prices.’
House of Commons leader and Lord President of the Council Lucy Powell was among those hit by dynamic pricing on Saturday, and eventually forked out more than double the original quoted cost of a ticket for an Oasis show.
Ms Powell said she ended up buying two tickets for £350 each for Heaton Park in July, which were originally quoted at £148.50, not including a booking fee of £2.75.
The Manchester Central MP told BBC Radio 5 Live that she does not ‘particularly like’ surge pricing, before adding: ‘It is the market and how it operates.
‘You’ve absolutely got to be transparent about that so that when people arrive after hours of waiting, they understand that the ticket is going to cost more.’
It is believed the ticket prices for Oasis gigs were set by promoters.
The band’s promoters, Manchester-based SJM Concerts, Irish MCD and Scottish DF Concerts & Events have all been approached for comment.
Brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher confirmed their reunion last Tuesday following the end of their more than a decade long acrimonious split.
There has also been concern about the non-official sellers Viagogo, who are listing resale tickets for thousands of pounds.
The secondary seller has defended the practice saying fans sell the tickets, and its global managing director added: ‘Resale is legal in the UK and fans are always protected by our guarantee that they will receive their tickets in time for the event or their money back.’
Oasis have told followers that Ticketmaster and Twickets should only be used for resales, and put up for prices at ‘face value’, otherwise they will be ‘cancelled by the promoters’.