Discrimination against disabled fans - Glasgow presale

We were hoping to buy tickets in the fan presale which started today, for Glasgow. However, we need one ticket for the wheelchair-accessible space, and neither Seeticket, who are handling the presale, nor Ticketsoup (the venue) will sell us one.

Seeticket say they're 'just an agency' and don't have access to the tix, so can't sell them to me. Ticketsoup say they'll be happy to sell me one on Friday, when the general tix go on sale, but not in the presale. Both referred me back and forth between them.

Apparently this is a common problem, only the venue can sell tix for its disabled access areas, but they won't make them available except in general sales. This seems like a clear case of disability discrimination to me - disabled people can't access the same goods and services as non-disabled.

We're afraid that all the tix will sell out before we can get them on Friday. What's the point of a fan presale if some fans can't buy tix?

I know this won't be the band's fault, but can anyone suggest how to reach them to make them aware? I've tried to contact the promotors, too - DF Concerts in Scotland - but no luck so far...

Bit of an eye-opener that, 2dot: I wrongly thought that wheelchair users just bought regular tickets and then got taken to the better-access area/platform or whatever after making themselves known to stewards on arrival at the venue.

You could try the band's management company, TRC Management, but again as it sounds more like poor communication and bad systems to accomodate a legal DDA requirement between the venue & ticket agencies, I'm not sure how far you'd get. You're probably more likely to get some inroads with direct contact to SECC's ticket office and see what they say about the ineffective distribution of tix for disabled people. It'd be interesting to see how much they know about their compliance with the DDA, so let us know how you get on.

TRC are looking into it for me, so I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks to Magical Trevor for the contact.

Glasgow SECC phoned me up on Wednesday to offer me tickets before TRC could get to them (on the orders of DF Concerts, who are promoting the show in Scotland). So my tickets are ordered, but I'm waiting for an answer from SECC management about how they will handle this in future.

Topically, the new Equality Act came into force on 1st October, and it's pretty clear that disabled people can't be offered an inferior service, so it will be interesting to see what SECC come up with - if they bother at all.

Anyway, all's well that ends well - now we can spend our time getting excited about March 15th!!

Glad to hear that's been resolved

Good to know you got sorted out.