Ticket purchased from an on-line tout for thirty pieces of silver! ... and is it real? It is a real scandal!!

The penultimate stop on the Road to Wembley from Scotland is the FA Cup semi final at Wembley on Sunday 23^rd April between Arsenal and Manchester City. I now have a very expensive ticket ordered and I don’t feel too good about it.

About an hour ago I bit the bullet and ordered my ticket for the Arsenal end from a so called ‘ticket exchange’ company called ‘Pro Time Tours’. I chose this company because at a cost of £139 (for a ticket with a face value of £30) they were the cheapest. I had lots of ‘companies’ to choose from all with hundreds of tickets to sell. This really is a scandal. My confirmation is shown in the pic below as you can see the first thing they did was to add on another £20 for shipping. This must be a very heavy ticket.

Thirty pieces of silver this cost me! Betraying the beautiful game

The nearest thing to this dodgy dealing that is  in my own frame of reference was about 10 years ago when me and Mrs Donkin bought two ground tickets for the French Open tennis from touts outside Roland Garros for 130 Euros each (face value 25 Euros). There was a horrible moment lasting about 3 seconds when the 260 Euros were in the hands of the touts and the tickets were also in his hands but it all worked out ok .. sort of. I am now experiencing that same horrible feeling except that it is lasting a lot more that 3 seconds. I have entered my bank details but of course I do not have the tickets yet. After my confirmation came up on the screen (as above) I was advised that I would get a confirmation email. It came half an hour ago as follows:

Dear Chris

Thank you for booking with protimetours.com.
Your tickets have been allocated to you ,and are fully secured.
However at the time of placing your booking, we were unable to gain
authorisation from your card.
This is most probably an error you made when entering your card details,
i.e the digits being entered incorrectly.
To finalise your order, we can send you a payment link via email, of
which you can then re enter the card details at your end.
Please confirm by return, we can then send the payment link over.

Kind Regards
Zach Mider
Accounts Department

--

Pro Time Tours

www.protimetours.com

E: hello@protimetours.com

T: (UK) 0203 868 4373  (US) 407 459 8164

This is now looking highly dodgy so I rang the number and it was answered and the operator assured me that he could see my name ‘Donkin’ on his computer but the payment had definitely not gone through and I must have made an error when entering the card details. This is most unlike me. In fact I don’t think I have ever done that, but I guess there is a first time for everything. He said he was going to send me the payment link. I asked him if I could ask him a few questions first as I was feeling anxious about this transaction. He reluctantly agreed but stated that he was very busy and why did I not check with my bank to see if a payment had gone through because he was not trying to charge me twice. I asked him how long had they been in business? How did the ticket exchange system work? Why do they not (like e-bay) tell me the name of the seller? How long until the tickets arrive? He became a bit impatient and managed to short circuit the conversation inviting me to ‘have a great day’. I got the feeling he is not proud of what he does. Forty minutes later the payment link email has arrived and payment is through paypal, so (rightly or wrongly) I feel slightly more comfortable. I guess if they try to charge me twice or I don’t get the ticket then I get my bank on to this although I am not sure I would have a leg to stand on … and I will continue to be in a state of high anxiety until the ticket arrives.

I only know one person who has bought a ticket in this environment and it is my good friend Jim Mullin. Jim bought a ticket from an on-line touts site to see his favourites Aberdeen FC play Celtic in the Scottish League Cup Final earlier in the season. I phoned Jim on Sunday night and he told me he used www.ticket4football and that his experience was ‘satisfactory’. The trouble is that when I checked their site this morning their cheapest ticket was £215 and that is significantly more than £139 (or £159 as it now transpires).

So, the die is cast. I might get in to see the big match – I might not. If anyone is reading this who knows how I can maybe get a ticket that is more likely to be genuine please do get in touch. The whole thing is very sad. Sad that the FA are not doing more to make sure tickets can go to those who want them and could pay a slightly higher tarrif from their official sources. Sad that dodgy guys are plying a dodgy trade in front of a PC to take advantage of twats like me. Sad (if my ticket is real) that an Arsenal supporter identified by his club as a genuine fan has chosen to sell his ticket to this dodgy site to make a profit of about £90 rather than return it to the club so they can allocate it to the next ‘genuine fan’ on the waiting list. All very very sad and depressing.

Back to football. A very interesting game played in the Premier League on Sunday as Arsenal and Man City went head to head three weeks in advance of their meeting at Wembley in the FA Cup semi final. The match finished 2-2 and with the spoils shared the beleaguered Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger was able to claim that in addition to their usual flair his team showed spirit and fight. Twice they fought back from being a goal behind and although they played with an identifiable nervousness there were also signs that they could be returning to form. I hope so. The Professor deserves a bit of a break.

Mustafi celebrates the Gunners second equaliser and grants Wenger a stay of execution

Both teams are in action again in midweek. Tomorrow Arsenal play host to West Ham and the City Slickers travel to Chelsea for a clash of the titans. I am going to watch a Premier Division match tomorrow when I will be at Hull City v Middlesbrough with my old friend Howard ‘Howie Baby’ Nimmo. Come back here at the weekend to see how it all panned out and a possible update on the ticket situation … but most of all … keep reading.