So the girls are getting back together... here is all the info you need to secure some tickets:

Tour Dates:

Los Angeles - 7 December
Las Vegas - 8 December
New York - 11 December
London - 15 December
Cologne - 20 December
Madrid - 23 December
Beijing - 10 January
Hong Kong - 12 January
Sydney - 17 January
Cape Town - 20 January
Buenos Aires - 24 January

You need to register at the official site - http://www.thespicegirls.com/

And also make sure you pay attentiont to the FAQ

If you want to increase your chances of getting tickets, you might want to also register, in your sister's/mom's/dog's name and email just to increase your chances.... you wouldnt be thinking of reselling any extra tickets you can get your hands on anyway would you? ;-)

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1. The Internet Ticketing Agencies

The UKs largest ticketing agency is Seetickets and its various subsites (e.g Gigsandtours). If you can find the tickets that you want still on sale here, then there is probably no reason to read on.

Ticketmaster is the worlds biggest ticket agent and just as well known as Seetickets.

There are however other less well known ticketing sites that may have tickets left when the big boys have already sold out:

A great ticketing site you really should check out...

A nice, relatively clean site, that just might sometimes be quiet when the others are all grinding to a halt.

If you know any others please post them up in the forum here.

2. Ticket Exchange Sites

The following websites provide ticket exchange services where you may be able to pick up a bargain:

A new site provide guaranteed delivery or 150% of your money back - a safer way to buy from scalpers.

Another site devoted to avoiding the ticket touts.

3. Band and Venue Websites

If may be obvious to some but have you checked out the bands official site? Sometimes they will set up their own online shop where you can buy tickets direct.

Also check out the website for the venue you are trying to book tickets for, most will be linked to the ticketing agencies but you never know until you try.

A quick Google search of the band name and "official site" or the venue name should land you in the right place.

We have whole load more info on how to buy from eBay and some price guides:

i) How to Buy from eBay

ii) eBay price watch

Okay so there is a lot to say about buying from touts on eBay... Ive split this guide down into the following sections to make it nice and easy to navigate.

Part 1 An Introduction
Part 2 Negotiating with Sellers
Part 3 How much should I be paying?

Once you have master all this you might want to take a look at our eBay ticket prices pages?

Back

How much do I need to pay?

The market for tickets on eBay is just like any other market, with the price determined by the number of buyers and sellers and changing over time.

There are several ways to investigate what price you should be paying and when you should be buying.

Completed Items search
By far the best way to work out the amount a ticket will cost you is to do a "Completed Item" search - located to the left of the item and about half way down the page. Check the box and click "Search". Magically you are presented with all the items that have sold for your chosen search in the last 30 days. Look at the last few items which finished the mostly recently, this is the market price.

You will probably be amazed at both the variation and also the similarity in prices... More importantly, Mr. Tout will be well aware of this amount and he will be setting his Buy It Now prices and bidding up his auction values towards it. So have it in mind when you are trying to negotiate.

Timing
When was the last time someone told you timing was everything? Well with ticket purchases on eBay it really is...

The market price for any particular gig varies dramatically between going on sale and the day of the gig so knowing when to buy is really important.

Here are some ideas about pricing for items:

1. Prices are highest for most gigs just after the tickets have just sold out on all the major ticket sites. Fans are panicking that they are going to miss out on seeing their favourite band so they flock to eBay to try and pick up some tickets before everyone else does - hoping to grab a bargain.

2. Prices will fall (for almost every gig). A combination of too many touts, extra dates or tickets being released or sometimes just the euphoria dying down often means prices will fall again.

You may not realise it but the ticket market is now so distorted by people buying just to sell on eBay that gigs are selling out simply because the touts buy all the tickets. "Yeah I know, thats the problem!" Yes, but this is actually a good thing, there are no so many people trying to do the same thing on eBay that they all end up undercutting each other in order to shift their tickets and preserve their profits (or minimise their losses).

Try waiting until the week before the concert and you will see tickets drop to way below their face value as touts try to reclaim what they can for the tickets. Is it nice to know that a tout can be subsidising your night out?

This doesnt work for every gig but believe me, it is now the rule rather than the exception.

3. Time of day - eBay sellers know when eBay receives the most traffic, this is usally during the lunch break or when people get home from work and varies depending on the gig. Younger teenagers are more likely to log on when they get out of school college than people in their mid 20s who are stuck at work until 7.30pm. Think about the following for the band you want to see and adjust accordingly. As a result, gigs that end in the early morning or late at night often end up selling for less.

4. Sniping - a nice little concept, sniping is basically the art of bidding at the last minute - the longer you leave the less chance you will be outbid. There are various tools and services on the Internet that will snipe for you - places incremental bids in the dying seconds of the auction up to your set maximum. This also stops you get carried away and bidding over the odds.

Negotiation with Sellers...
So now that you know how Mr. Tout makes his money, you can use this to your advantage...

BEWARE: None of the advice below can be considered a truely 'safe' way to buy on eBay and whatever you do, there is always a risk that you will will be unlucky and get rippped off. The most important thing to do therefore is pick a seller that you can trust.

1. Choosing a tout

Feedback - by far the safest way to buy on eBay is to go by the tout's feedback rating (shown next to their name in the top right corner of the listing). The higher the number, the more satisfied customers they have had and the higher the percentage, the less of these transactions they have had that have gone awry.

You dont have to go for the tout with the highest number and % but you probably shouldnt go below 98%. Remember that a lower seller will take a bigger hit to their % if one transaction goes wrong whereas a more established seller with a feedback score in the 1,000s can take 4-5 nasty transactions before their % take a dent. Click on their name and look at the recent transaction, make sure that they have some recent customers, that have bought tickets and have a feedback score of over 100.

Also, a word of warning about high feedback touts... it might just be me but it seems strange that bearing in mind how pissed off some people get about buying from touts, some of the high feedback touts dont end up losing their perfect scores every once in a while. This is especially true for high profile gigs which sell out quickly and where people register on eBay and bid up the item with the intent of ruining a touts feedback profile just to annoy them. Did you really believe that anyone would pay £1,500 for a pair of Take That tickets?

Also, make sure that the 'Buy Safely' box in the top right of the listing (below the sellers name) includes "Choose PayPal for up to £500 buyer protection." Even if you do not plan on using Paypal for whatever reason, it is nice to know that Paypal (and eBay) consider Mr. Tout trustworthy enough to guarantee that he isnt going to rob you. More info is here

2. How much should I offer?

If you are going to make an offer think about what the tout is looking for, use the Completed Items search (on the right hand side) to find out what the current selling price for your particular tickets is.

The tout will know that this is the current market value and will want to achieve somewhere close to this, if the current price is less than he paid for the tickets, he will be nervous that he is losing money and the market is falling (it almost always is), he will be looking to stem his losses, get out of the market and buy something else he can make money on).

Equally, if the tickets are truely rare, prices will rise so there is not much point in making an offer which is well below the current price.

Try to make an offer which is reasonable, gives Mr. Tout a decent profit he can be happy with and think about helping them to reduce his fees so he can pass his savings on to you. You will be amazed at the bargains you can pick up.

3. Communicating and Negotiating

Contact Mr. Tout – don’t make a Best Offer, these are lame as you have no way of communicating with him on what could sweeten the deal - he might be looking for a few £s more but he has no way of contacting you if you use this feature.

Use the “Contact the Seller” button (in the top right corneder) instead and send them an email asking how much they are looking for.

You could also let Mr. Tout know that you appreciate that the amount of his fees is a realy chuck on his profits. Stating that you can pay by bank transfer or cheque you will save them the Paypal fees and is perfectly within eBay's usage policies.

You could offer to buy outside of eBay (without winning the auction or using Buy It Now) and saving Mr. Tout the final value fee.

BE EXTRA CAREFUL – these tactics may reduce the price you pay, but they can also invalidate in the protection you receive from eBay (paying by Paypal can get you up to £500 of buyer protection).

Arranging with Mr. Tout outside of eBay is also contrary to eBay’s usage policy and some touts may tell you to get lost and could also report you, but its very unlikely – would you report someone who wanted to buy something from you?

Please note that most of what is in this guide is my own rambling advice and as such it should be read with a pinch of salt and a cup of tea. There is no substitute for using eBay safely and doing your own research. So dont blame me if you still get ripped off.

Part 1: An Introduction

eBays role in the business
Please bear in mind that eBay is just as much a part of the ticket touting menace you have been complaining about as the touts themselves. It is shocking just how unaware people are of the extent to which eBay benefits from this business.

An example
Lets take a look at the fees a tout will probably pay to eBay (and these are always being increased), if Mr. Tout sells you two tickets for £80 which have a face value of £50 :

i) Listing Fee – Say Mr. Tout has 8 tickets for a particular gig that he wants to sell in 4 pairs - he puts up a Buy-It-Now listing for which he will pay £3.

Remember that listing fees cant be recovered by Mr. Tout if the auction goes wrong and are paid whether the item sells or not. If Mr. Tout has 8 tickets to sell at £40 each and relists them 4 times he will have already racked up £12 in fees without selling anything. Do you feel sorry for him yet? Didnt think so.

ii) Reducing Listings Fees & Shill Bidding
Touts (and all kinds of other sellers) try to get around this by listing their tickets with standard auctions with a starting price of £1 (as this only costs 25p per listing). The risk for Mr. Tout is that the item will never reach the amount the he wants (or even paid for the ticket) – he will often then shill bid the auction up (bid using another account or get a friend to bid) to a certain amount that ensures they make a profit. If the item doesnt sell for enough and the friend ends up winning, he will agree to a Mutual Agreement Message and a final value fee refund will be granted to Mr. Tout).

Call it a rip off, contrary to eBay’s rules or even fraud but bear in mind that Mr. Tout is probably only trying to achieve the price he thinks that he can get away with (i.e that someone is willing to pay).

iii) Final Value Fee – the biggest cut, charged by eBay on the value of the item when you buy it - whether it be by Buy-It-Now or a standard auction. Have a guess as to how much this is if you buy the two tickets for £80 (exlcuding postage).

Go on guess…

Its about £3.80… that doesnt sound like much but that is on top our £3 for the listing fee and you haven’t even paid Mr. Tout yet.

iii) Paypal – not many people are unaware that eBay own Paypal these days and wow is it convenient (and pretty safe). But someone has to pay for that sleek integrated service. How much does that cost Mr. Tout out of his £80?

Enough guessing games… its about another £3.10

iv) Totals - So you have paid Mr. Nasty Tout a painful £80 (plus £4.25 for postage by special delivery I expect). But he has actually paid £9.90 of that to eBay in fees and charges, that’s 12.4% (okay he may be able to save on some of this by selling more than one pair of tickets for every listing but that is not the point I am making). How many ticket sales are completed on eBay every day? When I did a recent search there were 52,000 ticket listing completed in the last 30 days.
Not all of these resulted in sales of course and not all were for £80 of tickets, but if this worked out as the average, eBay would have pocketed £515,000 in the last month in ticket sales fees alone. But unfortunately its about as accurate as a finger in the wind.

But that isnt his total cost...
If these tickets have a face value of £25 each, we probably need to factor in a booking fee in the region of £1.75 per ticket and perhaps postage (to Mr. Tout) of £3.50 for secure postage per order). This means that Mr. Tout has actually paid £57 for your tickets in the first place.

Im still pissed about paying this guy over the odds...
So, when you are unhappy about the £30 markup Mr. Tout is making (on your £80), he is actually paying £67 for the pair of tickets and only making a £13 profit… so I dont think he is driving to the post office in a shiny new Mercedes is he?

Think about how Mr. Tout is feeling about this – he is the one working hard to get the tickets in the first place, listing them, being called a git by his mates and dealing with your queries, rearranging for the courier to redeliver them to him and standing in the queue at the post office to send them to you.

Not that I would ever condone touting, im just annoyed at how they are perceived as major criminals... Why do crack dealers live with their mums?

Ok, so you werent fast enough this time? First things first, dont panic.

There are several curiosities about the online ticket touting business that you probably dont know about:

1. Extra Dates

When the tickets sell out it doesnt always mean that they are actually all gone. A lot of the agencies now dont sell all their tickets all at once or the artists add extra dates within a day or two - all just to try and stop the touts. Dont feel like you have to rush in to buying from eBay straight away.

Can you imagine how annoying it is for a tout when he thinks a gig is sold out only to find out another date has been added and the number of those priceless, in demand tickets he was going to make a killing on have doubled?

Some tips:

- Try checking back in the afternoon after the tickets went on sale. If not, try again the next day.

- Look at the band's website and especially the forum to see if there is any talk of extra dates.

- This is more likely to happy with large middle sized, london venues like Brixton Academy or Alexandra Palace.

- Look at the tour dates - is there a gap that might be filled by another date at the same venue? If the band is playing at another venue the previous night and the following night, it is pretty unlikely they will be able to fit in another date.

2. More Tickets

Also you will be surprised but a number of extra tickets will suddenly be made available by the agencies much closer to the event.

If you can wait that long (and were planning on giving little Suzie the tickets for her birthday), sign up to the agencies mailing lists and wait for news. (Be aware that even if you are buying tickets for little Suzie from eBay or an agency, neither is likely to send you the tickets until much nearer to the event anyway.)

You can also try searching the agencies websites on a daily basis just to see if anything has come up. You will be amazed at how often extra tickets just magically appear without any form of email notice being sent out and you might just get lucky.

I will also be posting on this site with up to date news on releases whenever I can so check the [ENTER LINK TO LATEST NEWS] and the forums to see if anyone else has tips, on a regular basis. Who knows in the future I may be able to work out how to do some automatic email notification thing for you?

3. Arrrghhh No! I cant stand the wait!

Okay, so you have tried all of the above tips and you still havent got anywhere. Now you know that you are entering the reseller market you have two choices… eBay or one of the other internet reseller agencies.

Our Where to Buy page has some other ticket exchanges you can try if eBay doesnt suit you.

But read out safe buying guides first...

1. The Internet Ticketing Agencies

The UKs largest ticketing agency is Seetickets and its various subsites (e.g Gigsandtours). If you can find the tickets that you want still on sale here, then there is probably no reason to read on.

FSFDSDLKFJ
Ticketmaster is the worlds biggest ticket agent and just as well known as Seetickets.

There are however other less well known ticketing sites that may have tickets left when the big boys have already sold out.

DSDAS

A great ticketing site you really should check out...

DSFSDFFSD

A nice, relatively clean site, that just might sometimes be quiet when the others are all grinding to a halt.

If you know any others please post them up in the forum here.

SADASD

2. Ticket Exchange Sites

The following websites provide ticket exchange services where you may be able to pick up a bargain.

A new site providing guaranteed delivery or 150% of your money back - a safer way to buy from scalpers.

DADS

SFD;FKL

Another site devoted to avoiding the ticket touts.

DSFFD

3. Band and Venue Websites

If may be obvious to some but have you checked out the bands official site? Sometimes they will set up their own online shop where you can buy tickets direct.

Also check out the website for the venue you are trying to book tickets for, most will be linked to the ticketing agencies but you never know until you try.

A quick Google search of the band name and "official site" or the venue name should land you in the right place.

SFSDF

DSDFS

DSFSD

We have whole load more info on how to buy from eBay on our Buyer's Guide pages

Okay so you want to buy some concert/theatre/comedy or sports tickets?

Obviously these guides are written for concert goers but there is no reason why it cant apply to other ticket types.

1. Check the Where to Buy page first of course

2. Oh no, they have sold out already! (finding out about extra tickets).

3. Buying from eBay:

i) Part 1 : Introduction and some thoughts about costs...
ii) Part 2 : Communication and negotiation.
iii) Part 3 : How much to pay and when to bid.

Check out the forums for other tips or to post a question.