The Facebook group aimed at Exeter students – “Overheard at Uni of Exeter”, with over 42 thousand members at the time of writing, has recently been flooded with often anonymously listed posts that express anger and disappointment over the resell price of tickets to the leading nightclub Timepiece. Tickets are being sold by other students for over £40 a ticket, with the usual price of a ticket being just £3.
Tickets are being sold by other students for over £40 a ticket, with the usual price of a ticket being just £3.
Exeposé has had the opportunity to interview the owner of the ticket re-selling website MyNightOut, in an attempt to allow other students to gain an insight into how the platform works and clear up any potential misunderstandings that arose between students on Facebook.
When asked how the idea of creating a ticket re-selling app came about, the owner pointed to the frustrating experience of having previously been scammed on Overheard and wanting to provide other students with a platform for ticket-selling to be more organised and protected, rather than simply exchanging bank details with a random person claiming to be selling a ticket. He emphasised that having a platform for ticket-selling, where “people would be able to buy and sell tickets safely”, is important because otherwise, “it is pretty unlikely you get your money back” in the case of getting scammed, or your ticket not working.
One of the main controversies that arose on Overheard in the past week was the misunderstanding that MyNightOut is a “bot that buys out Timepiece tickets” and purposely sells them at a markup price. The owner told Exeposé that the app works by allowing other users to create accounts and generate rep codes that, when used upon purchase, give buyers money off. He further emphasised that he is not the person selling tickets on the site and that not knowing any details about the seller when purchasing a ticket adds a useful aspect of anonymity for his customers.
Tickets sold on MyNightOut are verified upon being listed on the website, and it operates on a strikes system, where if a fake ticket is listed, the person listing it gets a strike. Three strikes automatically bans the user, permanently. As the owner stated, the workload of managing a website is “perfectly manageable”, though he then described his primary struggles of coming up with a name that “stuck as much as MyNightOut did”.
The controversy over highly marked-up prices came from a few sellers listing their tickets on the website, with the highest one being sold for £49 – all upon people then posting about the ridiculous prices on the student Facebook group, and other students then expressing their rightful disappointment. In relation to this, the owner emphasises that “whereas this did happen, it’s important to mention that people selling tickets for ridiculous prices isn’t a new thing and certainly happened long before [the app] existed”, further stating that the £49 ticket is not related to his name, unlike many have speculated.
“It’s important to mention that people selling tickets for ridiculous prices isn’t a new thing and certainly happened long before [the app] existed.”
MyNightOut owner
The owner, who has a professional background in programming and coding, later told us that the most rewarding aspect of having created the app and running it himself, despite the recent controversies, is still “hearing how much people enjoy the website” and “allowing other students to find event tickets” easily and quickly.
The biggest challenge he faces regarding managing the website is “dealing with large numbers of sellers” and having to “track down a lot of people in a very tight timeframe”, as well as people not quite understanding how the app works in its logistics. He further points to the top sellers often buying out the tickets listed on MyNightOut and re-selling them again on Facebook for even higher prices, in hopes of making a profit.
Whereas MyNightOut is a “one-man job” for now, with the average ticket selling for around £10 with a rep code, the owner tells Exeposé that he is looking forward to hopefully expanding to other universities, with its first event at the University of Durham having gone live last week.
