On June 30, 2024, the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia filed an action against an online ticket exchange and resale website alleging violations of the District of Columbia’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act (D.C. Code §28-3904(e)). The complaint alleges that the company used deceptive and unfair practices to obscure the true price of concert and sports tickets in order to manipulate customers into purchasing tickets at prices higher than they initially expected and to discourage those customers from comparison shopping for cheaper tickets from competitors, a process known as “drip pricing.”
According to the complaint, the company’s use of so-called digital “dark patterns”—“online practices that trick or manipulate consumers into making choices that they would not otherwise make”—constitutes a deceptive online scheme. As described in the complaint, the company designed purchasing software which, when accessed by customers online or through the company’s app, advertised prices for event tickets that were artificially low because they failed to include the company’s mandatory fees. Once a customer selected specific tickets to purchase, a pop-up window would be displayed that emphasized the artificially low price of the tickets without mentioning the mandatory fees. The company’s software would also redirect the customer to a separate window in which a ten-minute “countdown clock” appeared, pressuring the customer to complete the transaction within that limited and artificial time window.
Also according to the complaint, while the customer continued to navigate the company’s website to complete the purchase, the company’s software would direct the customer to additional “filler” pages that would ask the customer to input information previously entered in an effort to deceptively slow down the customer’s progress while the ten-minute “countdown clock” continued to run in order to discourage comparison shopping. The software would also suggest to the customer that tickets that were similar to the ones they sought to purchase were scarce, selling quickly, or likely to sell out in order to instill a false sense of urgency in the customer. Finally, the complaint alleges that it was only after numerous additional and unnecessary screens appeared to the customer that required completion before the customer could purchase the tickets—further slowing down the transaction—that the customer was finally presented with the actual cost of the tickets. Only then would the “steep unexplained charges” in the form of “Fulfillment and Service Fees” be revealed to the customer. Those fees were otherwise not explained, nor did the company provide any explanation for how they were calculated. In some instances, those additional and previously undisclosed fees could amount to almost 40% of the initial advertised ticket price.
According to the complaint, the company’s use of the above-described “dark patterns” instilled a false sense of scarcity and urgency in customers while simultaneously obstructing them from quickly obtaining the real price of the ticket, which made them “spend[] significant time and effort choosing concert dates….and selecting seats.” That process, deliberately designed by the company, made the customers “far less likely or willing to abandon [the] transaction,” even after the additional fees are revealed. The complaint contends that since September 2015, approximately $118 million in hidden fees have been assessed against District consumers, the largest national market per capita for spending on tickets for live events. This case could be a bellwether for other jurisdictions with similarly large spending on tickets for live events under those jurisdictions’ respective consumer protection statutes.
The complaint seeks injunctive relief for violations of the District’s Consumer Protection Procedures Act, a disgorgement of the money the company obtained from its alleged conduct, and related statutory and civil penalties.
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