Disappointed Viagogo customers were left out of pocket and outside the venue

Simon Read had to intervene time and again on behalf of readers who bought tickets through the site, which never materialised

Taylor Swift in Dublin: sadly some fans didn’t make it (Getty Images)

The third company to make my list of shame for 2015 is Viagogo, the online ticket exchange. I had to intervene time and again on behalf of readers who bought tickets through the site but who were left out of pocket and outside the venue when the tickets never materialised.

There was the daughter of our Paris correspondent, John Lichfield, who flew from France to Dublin to see Taylor Swift as a celebration of finishing her exams. Then there was Josie Cole, who was left without tickets for Ed Sheeran – the same concert that Martin Pharo had bought two tickets for as a birthday treat for his son and who also ended up ticketless.

Next up was Sharon, whose two tickets for her daughter to go to One Direction’s London concert failed to arrive. Then in November, Katalin Tarjan travelled from Budapest in Hungary to London to see U2, to a no-ticket welcome. In the same month, Jack Pritchard discovered that the tickets he bought through Viagogo to see Seth Troxler and Apollonia in Amsterdam were fake.

In all cases, once we contacted Viagogo, replacement tickets or refunds were sorted out. But it shouldn’t have taken our intervention. The company tells me it deals with millions of tickets every year and almost all are successful transactions.

It quickly sorted things out once contacted by a newspaper, but it should have the same rapid response for people who may may have travelled a long way hundreds of miles to an event – and are left feeling cheated and fed up when their promised tickets don’t appear. Good customer service should be responsive to customers, not to journalists.

s.read@independent.co.uk

twitter: @simonnread