Harry Styles fan furious after paying £700 on two tickets due to Ticketmaster’s price surge

2 September 2022, 15:05

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By Katie Louise Smith

Harry Styles fans saw Love on Tour ticket prices surge thanks to Ticketmaster's dynamic pricing feature. £155 tickets doubled in price, with standing tickets costing over £350 each.

The struggle to get your hands on Harry Styles Love on Tour tickets is real – and very, very expensive, apparently.

Watermelon Sugar king Harry announced a whole bunch of new dates for his on-going Love on Tour shows, with tickets going on sale for various cities over the past few days. But some fans, who were hoping to see Harry live, saw prices of tickets originally priced at £150 double within seconds thanks to Ticketmaster's controversial dynamic pricing feature.

Fans were quick to note that none of this is Harry's fault, as he doesn't actually have any involvement with the dynamic pricing, but fans are still furious at Ticketmaster for upping the ticket prices during the sale. (Some standing tickets for pod access were raised to £300+.)

One Harry Styles fan, in particular, has shared her story with the press, explaining how she ended up paying £700 for two tickets, having only realised that the prices had spiked when she checked out. She says she's now going to struggle to pay for food and rent.

If you bought tickets for Harry's shows through Ticketmaster, you may have seen some of the tickets listed as 'Official Platinum tickets'. These tickets have dynamic pricing attached to them, which means they get more expensive as more people buy them.

The dynamic ticket prices also appear to be changing while people are in the middle of selecting, confirming and purchasing their tickets at the check out on the Ticketmaster website.

One Harry Styles fan reportedly ended up paying £697.45 for two tickets, despite the fact they were initially selected when they were priced at £155 each. By the time she had made the purchase, she realised how much she had actually ended up paying.

Speaking to the Birmingham Mail, the fan said she would have thought twice about buying them if she had seen the eventual price before finalising the purchase.

"I would not have paid that amount willingly as I can’t afford it," she told the publication. "At this price, I’m now going to struggle with basic things like grocery shopping and covering my rent. The prices are absolutely not fair in the current cost of living crisis."

The fan told the Birmingham Mail that she's now looking for a refund on her tickets.

What are Official Platinum tickets?

Per Ticketmaster's website, the obscenely priced Official Platinum tickets are "adjusted according to supply and demand, similar to how airline tickets and hotel rooms are sold." Basically, the more people want them in a particular section of the arena or stadium, the more expensive they will become. There is no fixed price.

Ticketmaster claims this price surge is in place to ensure fans get "fair and safe access to the best tickets", and to avoid resellers snapping up the tickets and selling them on for higher prices. They are not part of a package either, and they are often no different to general admission tickets. They're just very unnecessarily expensive standard tickets.

The whole thing has resulted in prices for tickets for hugely popular artists like Harry Styles skyrocketing so high, fans simply cannot afford them.

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