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Ethical ticket exchange Scarlet Mist closes down
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 5 December 2014
Ethical ticket exchange Scarlet Mist has closed down, founder Richard Marks announced via its Facebook page this week.
Launched in 2003, the website acted as a means for music fans to sell unwanted gig and festival tickets at face value, in reaction to the increasing numbers of tickets being sold at high mark ups by online touts. The site previously closed in 2011 because of “unacceptably high levels of fraud carried out [on the platform] by a small number of criminals”, but reopened again early the following year.
In a statement about this week’s closure, Marks explained: “I’ve been running Scarlet Mist more or less single-handledly for the past eleven years, as a part-time hobby whilst doing my day job as a hospital doctor. It has been fun to run it, and it has been a useful service. Unfortunately my wife is now disabled and I need to devote more time to caring for her and my family”.
Although he admitted that continued problems with scammers using the site were also to blame, the “final straw” being the discovery of the latest fraudster to use the site to con users out of money. However, he also held out a glimmer of hope for anyone keen to see the site back online – possibly as a Facebook app.
“I am very sorry to those of you who have been hit by fraudsters”, he said. “I’ve tried everything I can to stop them, but I cannot do enough to protect you. I’d be interested in finding anyone who wants to develop the site and use the knowledge and expertise that I have developed, but I don’t have time any more for the day-to-day running”.
Commenting on the continued need for sites like Scarlet Mist, he added: “Ticket touts and the secondary ticket market are here to stay. There is very little political will to address it, money talks in this world”.
As previously reported, the House Of Lords recently voted to include a new clause in the Consumer Rights Bill that would force people touting tickets online to provide buyers with a bunch of extra information, a move designed to make it clearer who exactly it is reselling tickets, how big a mark-up is being added, and what the risks are to the consumer by buying tickets via the secondary market.
Though this amendment – which is not government-backed – is yet to be approved by the House Of Commons, so may or may not become law. And, as Marks notes, even if it does, while the new measures would provide some protection for consumers, it would not cease the market for secondary tickets sold at inflated prices.
