Consumers will be provided with more transparency around dynamic pricing practices while in online queues to buy tickets to concerts or sports games, under new EU rules.
The regulations, proposed by Ireland’s commissioner Michael McGrath, will also tackle “subscription traps” that quietly begin charging people for a service after a free trial ends.
The Digital Fairness Act will also introduce a right for people to communicate with a person, rather than an AI chatbot, when raising a problem with a service they pay for.
“We all know the experience now of trying to contact many traders online or indeed by phone, and of course the predominant choice of communication on the traders’ part is through AI or automated customer service agents,” McGrath said.
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The proposed new EU regulations were introduced on Wednesday, by McGrath, the European commissioner for justice and consumer protection.
The regulations would introduce greater transparency around virtual queues for in-demand tickets used by Ticketmaster and other ticket-selling websites.
Ticketmaster and others would be required to show people how many tickets were still available when in virtual queues, how many were left at the standard advertised price and the maximum price tickets were being sold for.
An investigation by the UK last year found Ticketmaster did not inform Oasis fans that standard standing tickets for the band’s comeback concerts were being sold at two different prices, and that prices would jump as soon as the cheaper tickets sold out.
The inquiry found Ticketmaster also sold some “platinum” tickets at almost 2½ times the price of “standard” tickets – without sufficient explanation that these offered no additional benefits over some “standard” tickets in the same areas of the venue.
Speaking this week, McGrath said the proposed EU rules would require websites selling tickets for live events to be more transparent.
“Companies will have to show the current price in real time, and the highest possible price the consumer may have to pay at the end if they continue to remain on the virtual queue,” he said.
The proposed legislation would make companies notify customers when they were about to be charged a subscription fee at the end of a free trial, or before a contract was due to automatically renew.
“We are making it easier to cancel and ending unwanted automatic renewals and free trial periods turning into subscription traps,” McGrath said.
The proposal by McGrath is only the beginning of the European legislative process.
MEPs in the European Parliament and representatives of national governments in the Council of the EU would both have to approve the reforms, and probably make amendments, before it would become law.
