Harvey Goldsmith/Led Zep/Ebay – wtf?

I used to think that Harvey Goldsmith was a genius – one of the good guys, with a serious talent for A&R and an even bigger talent for Making Things Happen.

So it’s a bit sad to see that he’s got it all bass ackwards on something as simple (and as complicated) as ticketing for one of his shows… The long and the short if it is that he, like so many before him (stand up, Michael Eavis, live 8, the entire Mean Fiddler Group) has his knickers in a twist about sales of Led Zep tickets on Ebay.

Apparently, Ebay are refusing to take the sales down and HG is unhappy. This, I suppose, is fair enough – but I don’t understand why he feels justifed in making life harder for real fans, who bought real tickets, because of a total lack of foresight and planning on his part.

It’s not like we didn’t know that touting was a serious problem in the UK at the moment, with Glastonbury having to adopt ever more stringent ticketing procedures, just to beat the touts – and yet here’s Goldsmith, organising a massively over-subscribed gig, with nary a thought as to what might happen should these tickets find their way into touts’ hands and then on to Ebay.

So instead, he’s going to change a bunch of conditions and demand that people who have already paid for their tickets give him and his company a “reasonable explanation” for their behaviour.

Come on Harvey: If you didn’t want all the extra publicity angry fans, the hassle and the disappointment on little Johnnie’s face when mum and dad tell him he’s not going to the ball after all – then you should have spent about twenty seconds finding a way to do your ticketing better. It’s not a new problem, and you didn’t come down with the last shower of rain, so what happened?

via The Guardian and Ebay

edited for spelling (never rely on the Gruniad)