Customers of Ticketveiling.nl will have had to bid against a bot on the auction site for hotel stays, sauna visits, movie tickets and other leisure activities for at least several months in 2024. The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets has imposed a fine of 270,000 euros on the owner of the site, House of Tickets.
The malpractice came to light through consumer television program research Checkout after a tip from a viewer. The bot’s algorithm was designed in such a way that a lot on the site that could be bid on could never fall below a certain minimum amount. However, Ticketveiling.nl pretended that the bids were from other customers, and the system was even designed in such a way that bids were always placed under a changing fictitious name in a different pattern so that customers would not recognize the pattern. So what a viewer of Kassa did.
In more than 33,000 cases, participants in such a manipulated auction received a ‘smiling second offer’ from Ticketveiling.nl, ACM writes. They could then still buy the lot for the ‘winning’ bid – the bid from the bot. In more than a thousand cases, a customer also accepted that offer. ACM: “These non-winning participants of the auction might have made a different choice if they had known that the ‘winner’ of an auction was in reality a bidding bot whose aim was to increase the price of the auction.”
Ticketveiling.nl no longer exists. Owner House of Tickets now operates sites such as Action of the Day and Vakantieveilingen.nl. The company admitted to the former daughter’s wrongdoing and cooperated with the investigation. That is why the fine amount has been reduced by 10 percent.
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