STEP Transferrable tickets

[mshaman]

The only solution to scalping I can see is to make tickets STEP transferrable... i.e. they are issued in a name. It requires a driver's license or identification at the gate, and it must match the name on the ticket. The only way to change the name is via the STEP site (before tickets are physically printed and mailed).

So you can't sell a ticket on ebay, craigslist, or a ticket website, because it's in your name and has zero value if you don't transfer the name via STEP. But you can transfer it if you need to for face value minus whatever the processing fee is. If this were the case, there wouldn't already be hundreds of tickets on scalper sites for sale from $625-$1100, which is what I'm seeing at this writing. And there wouldn't have been so many people's grandmothers applying for two extra tickets. Problem solved.

I still don't like the lottery and would prefer an open sale where planners/contributors are rewarded and non-planners/non-contributors are left out, but that is a different subject for a different post.

[theCryptofishist]

I still don't like the lottery and would prefer an open sale where planners/contributors are rewarded and non-planners/non-contributors are left out...

You know, a lot of people who went on to become playa legends started off by casually getting a ticket a few days before the event, and ended up spending years contributing. "Non-planners" fully embody "immediacy", one of the ten principles. There is simply no reliable way to tell ahead of time who is and who isn't going to make important contributions.

Oh yeah, Radical Community...embrace those non-contributers!

[mshaman]

Oh yeah, Radical Community...embrace those non-contributers!

Here the values of the community come into conflict... I highly value "Radical Self-Sufficiency", but my ability to be self-sufficient, to take care of my own requirements by anticipating and acting upon them has been taken away. I can't just buy a ticket early and start working on my vision. But again, that is a topic for a different thread.

Here I'm more interested in proposing that tickets be made non-transferrable, except through a sanctioned program that only allows face-value sales. Kill the scalpers and the hoarders in one fell swoop. Burners win.

[JaRail]

I'll just add that transferring through STEP directly to another person isn't enough. A scalper could still charge you a premium before directly transferring it to you via step. It seems to me, the best solution is to have a wait list of names. You join the wait list when you become interested in burning man. When you get to the front, you can buy a ticket. If you choose not to, you go to the back of the line or defer to next year. And when it sells out, your signup date continues to the following year. I don't think pushing the reset button every year makes sense.

We need a system that respects burning man as much as a community as it is an event. Communities need some level of continuity. I have nothing against newbies.. but despite thousands of dollars in gear and hundreds of hours of research, I still learned the most and relied the most on the random veterans who took me in on the playa. If we find that despite the allowable growth in annual attendance, a seniority system would lock things up too much, let's have a lottery for the veterns. Maybe 10% of us need to take a year off to allow for some new faces. Or volunteer to take a year off. If it's volunteered, then a camp as a whole can take a year-off breather predictably rather than missing a few faces at random every year. Maybe there's a burden we can put on the veterans to contribute to a regional or somesuch that year.

I think everyone should be subject to the same wait list. If you want to sign up a friend by name and pay for their ticket, that's fine. But if they don't want to go, you can't just pick someone else at the last minute. That chance should really go to someone who has been waiting in line for months.

[theCryptofishist]

I'm pretty sure that they won't allow STEP tickets to be transferred for more than face value and cost. That's the other piece of cutting out the market from under the scalpers. If people know they are getting a real ticket here at a good price, they don't have to go to stubhub and ebay.

[mshaman]

Cryptofishest, Right, STEP tickets won't be available this year for more than face value, but because the tickets are transferable via other means, i.e. they aren't in anyone's name, there was still a huge incentive for scalping and hoarding. My suggestion is to make them ONLY transferable via step. They're in YOUR name and it takes YOUR driver's license to get that ticket past the gate. If you want to change the name on the ticket it has to go through STEP. Other than completely non-transferable tickets, it's the only solution I can see to hoarding and scalping, which have so negatively affected the lottery this year.