September 2008

9.19.08
Creditors Meet In London

Xclusive admits it failed to deliver more than $6 million worth of Beijing Olympic tickets, yet fails to apologize or accept responsibility. Click here for more details of the recent Xclusive Tickets, Ltd. Creditors Meeting in London.

9.8.08
Packaging a Problem?

As the investigation into the Olympics ticketing scams continues, questions have begun to be asked about whether the policies of the USOC’s official ticketing website may have helped drive people to the alleged scam websites. Jet Set Sports/CoSport, the only authorized source of Olympics tickets in the U.S., held back many of the best tickets to Olympic events and required that complete travel packages be purchased in order to get them. While bundling tickets and tours is nothing new in the travel industry, the fact that Jet Set Sports/CoSport was the sole official U.S. supplier of tickets to the Beijing Games meant that those who were not interested in packages had few other options. And one of those options, unfortunately, was to search the World Wide Web and be led to scam ticketing sites. For more on Jet Set Sports/CoSport and their relation to the Olympics, go here.

9.5.08
IOC Ignored Early Ticket Scam Warning

Could the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee have done more to protect people from being taken advantage of by scam ticketing websites? When they filed suit against a handful of allegedly fraudulent sites in late July, the committees suggested the answer to that question was no, and that they had only recently learned about the scams. But evidence suggests that had the committees been paying attention they could have known about the sites much earlier. And at least one ripped-off ticket buyer says he tried raising an alarm as early as February, only to be ignored. For more on what the IOC and USOC should have known, and when they should have known it, go here.

9.3.08
Chasing the English Connection

As China cleans up from the 2008 Summer Games, Olympics attention is shifting halfway across the world to England, the apparent home of many of the internet ticketing scams that ripped off so many people hoping for the experience of a lifetime. The games may have been Chinese, but the scams were, in a large number of instances, English, and the people behind those scams have been known to English authorities for years. Why little was done to rein in the scammers before now, and whether what happened in Beijing will be repeated in the London Games of 2012, is a question some have begun to ask. For more on the history of the English connection, go here.