Trade Me to continue enabling scalpers

Hurricanes fans queuing to buy tickets in July. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Trade Me says ticket scalping will continue on its website in spite of recent criticism about Super 15 Rugby tickets going for over-inflated rates.

Chairman David Kirk told shareholders Trade Me did everything it could to create trust and fairness, but added "our tickets category is quite a painful category for us at times".

The National Business Review reported that shareholders had expressed concerns about the scalping, particularly the recent Super 15 ticket scalping.

Kirk maintains users overwhelming support scalping.

Ahead of the Super 15 final this July, Hurricanes chief executive James Te Puni said the Hurricanes would try to invalidate any tickets he believed to have sold overpriced on Trade Me. Tickets reached up to $1500 online.

Prime Minister John Key weighed in on the issue, saying there were perfectly normal reasons to re-sell tickets, but it would be "a great tragedy" if people bought tickets deliberately to profit.

According to Trade Me's Trust and Safety Blog, there is a moral issue with reselling tickets but it "depends on the reasons for sale, and we're not into making moral judgements about members or their reasons for on-selling their purchased items".

Kirk also stated that if ticket sellers "had a genuine desire to remove that dynamic of unfair resale, they have those levers at their disposal, but we've seen a lack of appetite to use such tools".