The Cure‘s Robert Smith continues his long-drawn-out battle against the many monetary hurdles of the ticketing world — this time, he’s taking on secondary resale websites.
Just a few weeks ago, Smith was able to secure several refunds from Ticketmaster for fans looking to catch the British band on their forthcoming “Lost World” tour. Now, Smith says they’ve managed to cancel 7,000 scalped tickets and further announced a plan to resell scalped tickets and donate the original fees to the charity Amnesty International.
When the tour — the band’s first North American trek in seven years — was first announced on March 9, the Cure clearly stated they had opted out of Ticketmaster’s “platinum” and “dynamically priced” ticket options, both of which have infamously been the cause of a massive uptick in ticket prices (the latest case of this being Drake and 21 Savage’s “It’s All a Blur” summer tour.)
As a result, thousands of scalpers swept in, with Smith tweeting on Monday morning that “Approx 7k tickets across approx 2200 orders have been cancelled. These are tickets acquired with fake accounts / listed on secondary resale sites.”
The night prior, Smith said ticket buyers should not try to find a loophole with ticket transfer rules, and warned, “offering to sell/send account login details to get around [Ticketmaster] transfer limitations… any/all tickets obtained in this way will be canceled, and original fees paid on those tickets will not be refunded.”
This is just the latest update in a long list of efforts on Smith’s part to get ahead of the “‘Ticketmaster ‘Fees’ debacle,” he previously put it. “I am as sickened as you all are,” Smith wrote in a long string of all-caps Tweets earlier this month. “To be very clear: The artist has no way to limit them. I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of an answer I will let you all know.”
The band will hit the road starting May 10 in New Orleans for 30 dates with a closing show on June 1 in Miami.
