If you went through the ticketing war for the Coldplay concert in Malaysia, you’d know how hard it was to grab tickets – especially since everyone and their families are also keen on seeing the band live. However, a personal contact of ours is exposing a woman for allegedly grabbing over 100 tickets in total, from both the CIMB pre-sales and the general public sales.
In the tweet, Reneesha said she didn’t realize she was following an alleged scalper, who is claiming to be “innocent”. According to the tweet, Reneesha got furious while watching the IG story of the woman she was following, continuing with, “Whether it’s queuing for friends or not, same difference because multiple tabs are open and tickets are bought on all the tabs.”
The tweet included a screenshot of the woman’s IG stories. Both IG stories showed a computer screen with multiple tabs opened for the Coldplay concert’s ticketing site with different captions. The first Story was posted a day before with the caption; “today’s success rate: 100%”, while the second Story was posted more recently and included the caption; “today another 54”.
Reneesha provided some context in a reply, saying that the woman managed to grab 48 tickets on the first day during the pre-sales and another 54 tickets during the general public sales, totalling 108 tickets. It’s especially curious when you realise that each user could only purchase up to 4 tickets per account so 108 tickets is definitely a huge jump.
We reached out to Reneesha, who told us that upon seeing the person’s IG Stories, she confronted the latter to which the reseller replied that she “isn’t a scalper” and that she’s only running a ticketing service, charging RM80 per ticket for the purchasing fee. She continued to explain that she “only bought tickets for 13 buyers who wanted to attend with friends.” However, she did not provide any further proof of her innocence.
Reneesha’s tweet garnered the attention of Twitter users, many of them sharing their opinions of the situation. Many shamed the woman’s actions and some even tagged authorities in hopes that this situation would be investigated. One user also pointed out that the woman’s Instagram profile bio writes “My side job is 黄牛 (huang niu or yellow cow)”. The term is widely used by Chinese netizens to mean scalpers, hinting that this isn’t her first rodeo.
However, some netizens also backed the reseller up, saying that ticketing services aren’t unusual and since there isn’t direct evidence showing that she’s reselling the tickets, she could be telling the truth. One user even said that she is one of the woman’s clients and provided additional information but was subsequently slammed by netizens who said that by using services like this, she is only letting scalpers flourish.
Twitter user Darren Jau also chimed in on the situation and replied to Reneesha’s tweet with a TikTok video that showed a slew of computers operated to automatically navigate the ticketing site. The context is that the computers belong to scalpers (shown briefly in the video) who used bots to automatically buy tickets at a rapid speed. The usage of ticket-buying bots isn’t something new and since these bots can be easily accessed by the public, it’s not unlikely that the reseller is using a bot herself to purchase that many tickets on her own.
https://twitter.com/jau_xx/status/1658918375626534920?s=20
What do you think about this situation? Do you think this reseller is just a quick-handed buyer? Or do you think she’s trying to make a quick buck by reselling those highly sought-after Coldplay tickets?
Ok Menteri dah cakap.
I have spoken to peeps from KPDN.
Make a formal report. With all evidence you have.
They WILL investigate and take action.
Scalpers. Resellers. Yes, even 'ticketing service'. https://t.co/OZNpVfebjF
— ᴊᴏᴇ ʟᴇᴇ (@iamjoelee) May 18, 2023
