UFC-Que Choisir claims to have received close to "500 testimonies from consumer victims" of bad practices. The consumer organization announced Tuesday to file a complaint against the online ticket resale site Viagogo to denounce "deceptive marketing practices" and calls on consumers to avoid it so as not to "be fooled".
In a press release, UFC-Que Choisir specifies to file a complaint before the Paris judicial court "for unfair, deceptive and aggressive commercial practices and resale of tickets without authorization".
Founded in 2006, Viagogo is present in more than 70 countries and highlights partnerships with numerous producers, artists and large sports clubs in order to sell tickets for concerts, festivals or sports meetings.
However, “playing on the so-called scarcity of available places, the site multiplies alerts, oppressive timers, biased messages to precipitate the act of buying the consumer, while obscuring essential information, namely the price, "says UFC-Que Choisir. It can be in particular "21 other people watching this event", "there are only X tickets left" or "these tickets will probably soon be sold out".
Charges added after order
And that's not all. "Until recently the site added additional costs to the initial price, which the consumer only discovered once his order was confirmed and his account debited", denounces the association.
In addition, Viagogo sells tickets for sporting or cultural events "without the authorization of the organizers", and "many fans and supporters bought their tickets at a price two to three times higher than at the ticket office official, who find themselves in a bad position or who cannot access the event without valid tickets, ”said the UFC.
Based in Switzerland since 2012 and registered in Delaware, an American state with favorable corporate tax rates, Viagogo is pursued in several countries. Fifa notably announced in June 2018 that it had filed a complaint against the site for illegal commercial practices in the sale of tickets for the Football World Cup in Russia.
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Pursued in France by many sports and cultural organizations which accuse it of speculating on prices, the platform had lost a round in December 2018 at the Constitutional Council, where it contested the validity of French law. In the United Kingdom, the competition gendarme (CMA) accused her of bad practices and even sued her before suspending the procedure in September, because of the measures taken by Viagogo.
