Trevor Mallard Agrees With Me

I wrote, in opposition to the former Labour government's legislation, initiated by Trevor Mallard, banning ticket scalping for the Rugby World Cup:

I also can see no particularly good reason that somebody with a ticket that somebody else values more shouldn't be able to make a buck in the transfer. Why should all the surplus go to the buyer?

Trevor Mallard writes today, after taking some stick for scalping (on-selling at prices above face value) some tickets for an event which he found he could not attend:

"I'm slightly surprised if promoters with whom I spend several hundred dollars a year on tickets complain when I sell some I can't use to someone who wants them using a Kiwi-based online auction."

He listed the tickets at face value, but let the auction run above $500 because he "knew that they were worth more".

"It's an auction system, I mean apparently there's some system when you can 'buy now'...I do [know] now because people have been telling me about it but I've never used it at all in the past."

The young people he had sold the tickets to had seemed perfectly happy when they came to pick them up, he said.

Exactly, Trevor. Shame you didn't see it that way when you banned everybody else from doing it a few years back. Would somebody offering to refund the money when caught have been given a break under your legislation?

HT: TVHE, Farrar, half of twitter....

Hit the scalping tab below for a rather extensive series of prior posts; this one's still my favourite.