The Cure frontman Robert Smith says the band have cancelled more than 7,000 tickets found on resale sites in an attempt to crack down on touts.
The band are set to tour the US later this year, but decided not to use Ticketmaster’s ‘dynamically priced’ and ‘platinum’ ticket options.
They also put a restriction on ticket transfers in states where this was legal to do so - such as New York and Colorado.
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Yesterday (31 March) Smith took to Twitter to announce that around 7,000 resale tickets had been cancelled after they were found to have been bought using ‘fake accounts’.
In a post on Twitter, Smith wrote: “Approx 7k tickets across approx 2200 orders have been cancelled. These are tickets acquired with fake accounts / listed on secondary resale sites.
"TM have identified specific locations from secondary postings”.
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Prior to this, Smith had warned his followers not to resell any tickets, writing: “Beware another scalper scam: offering to sell/send account login details to get around TM transfer limitations… any/all tickets obtained in this way will be cancelled, and original fees paid on those tickets will not be refunded.
“Original fees paid on those tickets will be donated to @amnesty Amnesty International, and the tickets themselves will be resold to fans.”
Smith had previously posted on Twitter to say: “We had final say in all our ticket pricing for this upcoming tour, and didn’t want those prices instantly and horribly distorted by resale.”
The latest slew of tweets comes after Smith hit out Ticketmaster’s fees, telling his fans: “I am as sickened as you all are.”
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In a follow up tweet he added: “To be very clear: The artist has no way to limit them. I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of an answer I will let you all know.”
Smith explained the band had opted out of the ‘dynamic pricing/price surging/platinum ticket thing’ as they felt it was ‘a bit of a scam’.
He urged Ticketmaster to issue small refunds to verified fans who had bought tickets, which the company agreed to.
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“After further conversation, Ticketmaster have agreed with us that many of the fees being charged are unduly high, and as a gesture of goodwill have offered a $10 per ticket refund to all verified fan accounts for Lowest Ticket Price (‘LTP’) transactions,” Smith wrote on 16 March.
The band is set to embark on a 30-date tour across the US, kicking off in New Orleans on 10 May and ending in Florida on 1 July.
Claire Reid