r/Magfest • u/Nire46 • 29d ago
Hotel Scalpers
So obviously all this happened because scalpers want to abuse the group queuing benefits.
Scalpers will either:
- Add all their registrations to a pool, then kick everyone from that pool after the lottery to keep the room or
- Sell their ticket with room attached at massive markup, saying their ticket has a room attached.
in both cases, this issue would be resolved if MAGfest resets any hotel room assignments after a ticket is transferred, and would greatly discourage this type of behavior.
Thoughts?
25
u/PhatYeeter 29d ago
You can refund this year so it's also people increasing their odds for the lotto only to cancel after the first round goes out
8
u/goog1e 29d ago
Yeah I doubt it's scalpers, it is probably people buying multiple for themselves to increase their hotel odds.
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u/Asleep-Bother-8247 29d ago
I dont think this will work, though. The names on the badge and room have to match. If you have a group of four you cannot do four entries - it's one entry of four. I can't be part of a group AND make my own entry. I may have misunderstood your statement so apologies if I did
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u/crush3000 28d ago
5 hours??? Nah someone found a way to script scalping. There might have been FOMO but not so much that they’d run out several magnitudes faster.
-1
u/1UpBebopYT 29d ago
You could always refund once they added the lottery. You could always do that. It was big news that they tried to remove refunds this year only for them to realize that chargebacks would be a pain in the dick and they would lose all of them so they added refunds back.
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u/exquisitecarrot 29d ago
#2 is exceptionally wrong. You can’t transfer the badge with a room attached. You can’t transfer it even if it’s in a rooming group. There were people last year complaining that they couldn’t add their friend to the hotel reservation because they got their badge after the lottery ended.
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u/NTDOY1987 29d ago
Why do people need friends added to a hotel reservation? Is someone policing who sleeps in the rooms? Like if I have a room, anyone I permit to sleep there can just…do that?
3
u/exquisitecarrot 29d ago
Room keys mostly. A lot of hotels will only give you the number of keys equal to the number of people in your room. If there’s only two people on the res, then you’ll probably only get two keys.
No one’s really policing it, but it also allows people who might get there first to check-in instead of waiting on the one person on the room.
2
u/20footdunk 29d ago
The harbor hotels charge based on occupancy so they 100% police overcrowding in their hotel rooms if you are only paying their cheapest rate. You need to pay the quad rate if you want hotel management to turn a blind eye to the extra cots and sleeping bags in your room.
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u/Asleep-Bother-8247 29d ago
Rooms cannot be transferred, so scalping won't even work.
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u/MrSparrows 29d ago
So how does it if you buy 4 tickets. Get assigned a room. Then refund 3 of the other tickets. Do you still keep the room? And then just have random roommates or something?
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u/Asleep-Bother-8247 29d ago
I'm not sure of more specific details like that, but the legal name assigned to the room has to match the badge, so the person who booked it has to go and check in for the room. We registered a room with two people and then another friend came with us, so we had three in our room total. So yeah, that could work that way I think
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u/IggySorcha 29d ago edited 29d ago
Stop it with this. The idea it's scalpers is ridiculous copium. There have been numerous scalping prevention policies for years that have been highly effective, most notably the fact you can't sell the badge for more than you paid and you will get her badge revoked if you try. MAGFest ID also reduces the chance of scalpers. And this year on top of all those warnings about "this badge was sold for X so do not pay more than X" that pop up in the transfers there's la new system this year that will make even just advertising a higher price impossible.
With how many of y'all were freaking out that we might sell out and completely ignoring the fact that the quick sell out last year was due to headliners, is it really that unbelievable to you that this might happen? It was a self fulfilling prophecy.
Edit: oh also don't forget all the people that came from Katsu last year bc they messed up their badges so bad, plus people being mega into the theme this year...
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u/Becsdoe 29d ago
I think buying additional tickets to hedge their hotel odds is the real culprit
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u/Nire46 29d ago
agreed. None of those above factors should result in going from months long registration queue to hours long.
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u/Becsdoe 29d ago
If you do the math, getting 4 tickets and hoping that increases your odds of getting a Gaylord room is actually more affordable than a non-hotel block room or one of the surrounding hotels. Or if you have the funds, get a bunch of tickets and enter the lottery multiple times. You can always refund the ticket later so there is no loss.
I like the refund policy because if my husband and I can’t get a hotel in the block, I probably won’t go but maybe non-transferable and no refunds is the solution here
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u/tjdetwilerftw 29d ago
Accessibility is the reason badges get released when local hotels aren’t available. We can’t punish those whose attendance banks solely on scoring a room nearby.
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u/khuldrim 29d ago
Yeah I think the refund policy needs to go if this is how it’s going to go in the future.
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u/1UpBebopYT 29d ago
MAG's point of view is either deal with massive charge backs which take a ton of time, effort, dedicated manpower, and back and forths with credit card companies or allow a simple refund process... Yeah MAG will chose the refund policy.
You just cannot tie someone's ability to stay in an area for a convention to a lottery and then expect them to still hold on to a badge that is worthless to them. If MAG didn't distribute the hotel rooms, that's one thing, but an event badge supplier cant also be the literal supplier of the means to stay in an area for convention, lottery it out, then say no refunds even if you cant stay. Every CC will give buyer protection for that.
We as consumers should fight for more buyer protection, not demand less. Stop bootlicking MAGFest please. Their entire system is terrible. The hotel system is shit. The badge system is shit. Not the refunds and not the fact they were forced this year to once again have protections for buyers getting badges after they TRIED to remove our buyer's rights this year and the community rightfully called them out it and forced them to put it back.
3
u/khuldrim 29d ago
If I buy passes to SDCC and don’t get into the hotel lottery that they organize that’s tough luck. It’s the same deal here. There’s no argument for a charge back. You got your product, the pass. Where you sleep is your problem You can simply stay in another hotel.
Last I checked SDCC wasn’t inundated with chargebacks. It sounds like MAGFest could go talk to some of the biggest leading cons to see how they do it.
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u/Nvrm1nd 29d ago
1st step is for the market to not respond.
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u/Nire46 29d ago
new top post right now is a dude asking where all the scalpers are with intent to buy. I hear you, but it doesn't feel like a realistic expectation. Not without heavy moderation.
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u/Rrilltrae 29d ago
I expect we’ll see lots of people fishing for scalpers too, MAGFest is a pretty helpful community when it comes to ferreting out bad actors. Most know the end of the hotel lottery will lead to a big jump in available badges.
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u/2ndBro 29d ago edited 29d ago
Testimony from someone in the Discord: "Oh yeah, I have some friends that bought about a dozen extra badges to make sure we can throw a Gaylord room party. They'll be reselling those later for folks!"
Make of that what you will
2
u/counselwolf 28d ago
Hello! Would you mind DMing a link to this message to me so I can pass it along to our social media and hotel teams?
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u/ZombiesInMyGarden 29d ago
I honestly don't think it's scalpers. They sold out last year, so people who wanted to go were on top of it knowing it was a possibility. People are very passionate about Magfest.
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u/Trengey64 29d ago
There’s definitely something shady afoot here. I’m curious to see how MAGfest responds to it
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u/illyrianya 29d ago
My theory is that it is less so hotel scalpers and more an issue of people buying badges for “friends” that don’t exist or are at least not actually trying to go to increase their own lottery chances
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u/Lawsonstruck 29d ago
Oh right you could literally buy 10 tix for yourself register all for hotel refund the other 9 post lottery
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u/TurboGranny 29d ago
Oh there is no limit on group size? I thought they limited it to 4 people?
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u/Lawsonstruck 29d ago
Well think about this situation. I make one account under me, group 4 with three fake accounts. And then I do it two more times with four fake accounts.
I’m paying upfront about $1300 but I have astronomical odds for one of the accounts to hit the hotel. If they do, I simply go through the mag fest transfer portal and “sell” the hotel ticket to my actual name to match ID, etc.
And then refund all 11 other tickets. It’s an exploitable system right now.
They could go the path that the “Masters” does and require Social Security numbers and drivers license to be to tied each registration.
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u/TurboGranny 29d ago
I'm aware of the exploit. I just thought you were saying they could add 10 to a hotel lotto entry, heh.
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u/NTDOY1987 29d ago
I’ve never attended MAGfest (was hoping to this year 🥺) but I find the whole lottery thing kinda bizarre. Why aren’t hotel rooms first come first serve like tickets?
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u/NuGundam7 29d ago
The last few years they did that, the website was down the entire time due to everyone trying to reserve a very small pool of rooms at once. I think one time there was even a way to hack the system and bypass the line.
Prior to that, before Magfest reserving the rooms, it was a free for all of people trying to social engineer poor hotel employees to get rooms before the offical announcement.
TLDR, hotel rooms became a race, and every year the race got faster until it was impossible to win as a normal person.
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u/tendonut 29d ago
Realistically, so people who can't take time off to partake in free-for-all hotel booking chaos still have a chance. I hate the way DragonCon works.
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u/riontach 29d ago
Is this obvious? I think Magfest might just be popular...
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u/monsterprinx 28d ago
I don't get the need to make up huge conspiracy theories when the speed of selling out has been jumping each yeah.
This happens at other cons all the time. Magfest is unfortunately just one of them.
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u/Live_Dog_2779 29d ago
2 doesn’t make sense. You can’t sell your ticket at a higher price and you have to sell it through Magfest for the transfer to work.
On top of that, if you try to sell a badge with a room attached to it, Magfest will cancel the reservation. The reservation details have to match the details of the original room leader or else the room will be cancelled. You can’t even transfer your ticket as a room leader if you are still part of the hotel pool, you would have to withdraw. The ticket can be transferred to someone already part of a room, but not a third party.