Cops crack gang that used bots to book and resell immigration appointments Police have arrested 69 people alleged to have used bots to book up nearly all of Spain's available appointments with immigration officials, and then sold those meeting slots for between €30 and €200 ($33 to $218) to aspiring migrants. The bots essentially shut down the nation's online booking system by overloading it, …
I recall a story about tickets for the recent Eurovision Song Contest finals in Liverpool were similarly bought up by touts and then sold on at a significant profit. Not that I wanted any, my tinnitus means that loud, live concerts, however enjoyable the music, can be a bit painful.
I noticed through extensive field studies that my ear pain depends mainly on the enjoyability of the music played and far less on its actual volume. And, also learning the hard way, I found that "enjoyability" does not have, very unfortunately, a universal definition. So, even though it is still a mystery to me why and how, but I learnt to accept that some people actually do enjoy Eurovision Song Contest.
Remember the news story not long ago where driving test appointments were being block booked and then sold on at a huge profit?
Not only do gov.uk not learn from a technical point of view, but they don't learn from a legal point of view either. Shirley it's easy to make it a specific crime to profit from this sort of carry on. That wouldn't actually stop it from happening because there will always be somebody willing to take the risk of prosecution. What such legislation would do it make it easier, cheaper and quicker to prosecute. Which would be better for the public purse, but also more and quicker prosecution would then present more of a deterrent.
Oh and whoever mentioned event tickets earlier. The government keep on telling us they are concerned about ticket scalping but when challenged to do something about it they say it's complicated. No it isn't there's an easy start, just make selling tickets for more than their face value a crime. Oh and yes that does mean that charging an "admin fee" on the sale of tickets would be illegal. And so it fucking should be. I get tired of seeing a list price on a ticket and then learning there's several pounds "admin fee" per ticket. If you're ordering online how can there possibly be an admin fee per ticket? Maybe per sale (although I'm not even sold on that) but PER TICKET?
Again this wouldn't stop people selling on tickets at inflated prices, but making it a specific offence would make prosecution easier and therefore make it more of a deterrent.
In short legislation will never stamp out this king of shite, but it can reduce the problem
-> Shirley it's easy to make it a specific crime to profit from this sort of carry on.
The government is far too busy preparing legislation to fine cat owners £500 for not having their cats microchipped. The low-hanging fruit of 'crimes'. Yes, solving block booking seems to me to be easy to control. Require the use of a provisional licence number to make the booking, and give a time window for that number. Once that window has expired, the applicant can reapply. That would probably cost Capita or other outsourced 'IT provider" about £500 million to code up, then not work properly.
jollyboyspecial: I get tired of seeing a list price on a ticket and then learning there's several pounds "admin fee" per ticket. If you're ordering online how can there possibly be an admin fee per ticket?
In the UK the money from ticket sales goes where the contracts state, sometimes all of it will go to the artiste(s), so the venue has to apply handling charge or fee of some sort or they would be giving their building, staff time etc. for free. I agree that it is annoying when there are extra charges not shown on the advertising, but it is the hiding of the charges I object to, I don't what the venues to close due to lack of funds.
Interesting - it was a NIGHTMARE getting a UK interview appt for my immigrant spouse* - you were being offered a 6.15am appt in Belfast twelve Tuesdays from now unless you bought a "premium" appointment for £100. Either way, the current arrangement is ridiculous and Sopra-Steria are awful.
*my UK-born spouse didn't need one. Hope they don't bump into one another...
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To prevent fraud the online booking system must require a reasonable fee (~20 euro) payable online/offline to even enter the booking page. Passport photo must be uploaded as well. Number of so issued tickets must be unlimited assigned to random time slots. If the real demand is higher than available slots in the offices, this could become a preliminary booking step. Image recognition can be used on the passport photos to make the process simpler and fraud-free. Booking fee could be returned for the poor applicants.
We have the same issue in Israel - a group of [Russian] hackers have hijacked the appointment process for getting passports - they grab all the open slots and charge 500 Euro to get a near date/location. The MoI had to open up 4 bureaus that you can walk in without an appointment (although some people have waited 12 hours in line w/o bathroom breaks etc.) just to clear the backlog. Seems to be working. No one arrested... yet.
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