Fans fuming again as comic |gets his "Nose" scalped

A lot of people ignore the rules, but perhaps none do it so blatantly and incur so much public wrath as ticket scalpers. 

The latest case involves hot seats for comedian Udom “Nose” Taepanich’s upcoming series of one-man stand-up shows, which became even hotter once they ended up en masse in the hands of the so-called “ghost ticket” trade. We’d heard it all before, but not quite the way it was documented on Pantip.com by an eyewitness posting as “Nang Back Kung”. 

Nang Back Kung had photos and video to back up his account of what happened the other day at ThaiTicketMajor on Chang Wattana Road. Right there, under a sign saying “Maximum 10 tickets per customer”, was a guy buying scores of them. 

Nang Back Kung arrived at 7am and found several other people already in line – he was No 12 in the queue. Then the sales booth opened and the first 10 people in line immediately handed their queue slips to a guy dressed (suitably for the role) all in black. And then the minions walked away. The man in black nuzzled up to the counter and commenced buying, and it took him fully an hour to complete his transactions. Nang Back Kung didn’t get to the front until past noon. 

While he was waiting his turn, he took pictures and video and others in the queue fired questions at the dude in black trying to find out what his game was. It became obvious that the greedy fellow was no fan of Nose. He knew nothing about the star of the shows for which he was buying seats, says Nang Back Kung, who would also like to ask ThaiTicketMajor to explain, if it’s not too much trouble, why its staff were letting the scalper get away with this heist.

Among the many comments on the Pantip post, plenty of folks said they’d seen the same thing happening elsewhere, and it was pointed out that the purchasing rules are well ventilated with loopholes. There’s nothing stopping scalpers from hiring others to queue for them – as many as they can afford to hire. 

ThaiTicketMajor is no doubt still feeling the sting of criticism after last month’s fiasco over Maroon 5 tickets. Fans waited for hours to buy seats only to find that most were already gone even before the stated time of sale. Actress Morakot “Aimee” Kittisara ended up in the same angry soup after posting a picture on Instagram of an entire row of tickets for the American band. Trust a celebrity to use her star power to grab 25 seats, she was told with scorn. 

Aimee swore that she and her friends had just put their tickets together to show off, and they’d all been legally purchased online. To needier fans it didn’t matter by then, though, because she’d become tarred with the injustice of it all. The scalpers are advertising their ghost tickets online minutes after official sales commence, with the prices jacked up and often doubled. 

Lots of fans have echoed the call for a boycott on scalpers issued a while back by Yuthana Boonorm, organiser of the annual Big Mountain Music Festival, who’s compared the audacious scalping scam to “daylight robbery”. “They even advertise on our Facebook page!” he says.