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August 04, 2008
Beijing olympics ticketing fraud
The news is all over the media about the Beijing Olympics ticketing fraud. I was interviewed on ABC news today about this issue - I'll post a link to the video as soon as I have it available. It's a big story, and a tough reminder of how easy it is to get scammed online.
The allegedly fraudulent site is still up and still taking orders. It's hosted by Servepath, with domain hosting by Enom. If they are legally ordered to take the domain or site down, then they'll have to do that - but in the meantime it's their responsibility to fulfil the terms of their contract with their customer. We can't ask them to play "judge and jury".
On the other hand, the fact that the fake sites made they way up towards the top of Google's rankings is all due to sloppy reporting - Forbes Traveller (hosted on MSNBC) linked to fake sites for 3 of their 5 listed "official ticketing Web sites" (in fact, the fake 3 were all listed first!) One would think that before such an august publication created such a list that they might call the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ask, but apparently just a Google search is all that's required to be considered a journalist nowadays...
Also in the firing line should be Google, which is running an advertisement for a scam site as their first link for the search term "Beijing Tickets".
But the real question is this - how can it have taken so long for Aussie consumers to get notified that they need to cancel their holidays because they don't have tickets? The Washington Post run an article on this scam site way back in February, and it was 2 weeks ago that the IOC and USOC filed suit against the companies involved. If the Australian authorities had at least taken action then, those caught up in this would have had time to make other plans - but now it's too little, too late for Australian consumers.
Posted by Jeremy at August 4, 2008 03:55 PM
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Comments
You have to love the 'Terms & Conditions'!
hxxp://www.beijingticketing.com/terms_conditions.aspx (If you want to look replace hxxp with http)
XL & H Ltd. are a worldwide brokers of event tickets. We specialise in obtaining hard to get tickets to sold out events. Through our many sources we are able to get a wide variety of seats to almost any event in any city. Due to these efforts and costs involved, all seats are sold at above face value.
Posted by: Stephen ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://bleedingedge.com.au/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 4, 2008 08:01 PM
Interesting post, Jeremy!
I’m on the same page as you regarding the general proposition that there seems to have been both communication and regulation failure at almost every level. It will be intriguing to see how the consumer protection matters are played out over the ensuing weeks.
That said, I do wonder what is going on in the heads of folk who are prepared to commit tens of thousands dollars without checking firsthand that the agent concerned has full accreditation from the controlling body. Consumer protection can only go so far.
Posted by: Extulit at August 6, 2008 12:19 AM