Now, if you’re not a transparent Ticket Seller, you’ll get a big fat ticket!

You’ve “heard” me blog/talk about this idea before.

And it looks like we weren’t the only one thinking about it.

Because that “it” is now a law.

New York State passed a law a few weeks ago that now requires secondary market sellers to disclose that they are, well, secondary market sellers.

Why did Albany get involved?

The problem has been that consumers like my mom (true story) have purchased tickets from Secondary Sellers online without knowing they were Secondary Sellers, and paid them more than they needed to pay.  Moms all over the country have felt ripped off, and what’s worse is that they started to believe that theater tickets were higher than they actually were.

The counter-argument from the reseller is . . . “Hey, if you’re looking for a fridge, and you google around and find a site that has the fridge you want for $500 and buy it, yet another site has it for $400, why is that the fault of the site?  Isn’t that good marketing?”

It’s a decent argument and had there not also been a problem with many sites deliberately trying to confuse customers by buying domains with the name of the theater or the name of the show, or other ‘black hat’ SEO tactics, this probably wouldn’t have been an issue.  But certain sellers (and not all, mind you), got greedy . . . and that’s when the lawmakers stepped in.

So now . . . a Secondary Seller has to be transparent and disclose to their customers that they are not the Primary Seller.

And the only Sellers that should be disappointed with this new law are the ones that were trying to confuse consumers.

Because being transparent and telling customers exactly what you do and why you charge what you charge is not a hindrance . . . it’s actually a benefit.

If I were an SS, I’d just tell people the reasons I charged more.  “We get you the best seats, when you want them, hand-delivered, no fuss, etc., etc.”  There are plenty of people that will pay more for that experience.

Businesses in all industries, not just ours, should embrace exactly what they are.  They should be 101% honest about their place in the marketplace and the service they provide.

Sure, they may lose some customers in the short term, but they’ll retain a lot more in the long.  And successful businesses are not about getting a customer one time, they’re about getting a customer (like my mom) one hundred times.

 

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