The latest general election drama to grip the nation sees an outraged AKB48 begging for a refund of the ¥950,000 he used to buy 1000 vote tickets which had already been used – having appropriately enough been described in the auction as “second-hand.”
The incident began on Yahoo! Auctions with an innocent enough seeming auction of 1000 “second-hand” general election voting tickets (normally bundled with CDs as a way of rigging the music charts) to an AKB48 otaku desperate enough to pay ¥950,000 for them.
On arrival of the precious voting tickets the buyer was unhappy to find they had all in fact been used:
“They were all used to vote already!”
“After paying for them, when they arrived they were all already used. Even for a second-hand purchase they are not worth ¥950,000 at all. The seller is clearly malicious!”
He apparently intends to take the matter to the police if no restitution is forthcoming.
The seller is having none of it:
“Somebody demanding a refund for second-hand goods they bought like this is too much. I’m reporting your negative rating to Yahoo! as inappropriate.”
Despite all this the seller managed to accumulate over 400 “good” or “very good” ratings over the course of their auctioneering, and the tickets were clearly identified as “second-hand” – and nowhere did the description state they were “unused votes” (or for that matter “already used”).
Yahoo! appears to have suspended the seller anyway, but it is not clear what action they are taking – though popular opinion seems to be in the seller’s favour:
“How I laughed…”
“Well, they were advertised as ‘second-hand’!”
“Buy the CDs at least, idiots.”
“AKB48 fans are such easy marks.”
“This is obvious fraud. Get the police involved!”
“Second-hand means used. What did he expect?”
“You should still be able to use a second-hand item. These could not be used!”
“No way would this result in charges. The seller clearly states they are used.”
“AKB48 otaku never change.”
“Who cares what happens between these otaku maniacs!”
“It’s bizarre to have an election dependent on buying votes anyway.”
“God, the general election is now the NHK’s top story… what has happened to the world.”
“This otaku was asking for it. How did he think he was going to get 1000 tickets for ¥950,000 when they only come with CDs which cost ¥1500 each?”
“You’d think he might have realised something was up right there.”
“Anyone prepared to spend ¥950,000 on something like this is already beyond help.”
In total
I miss these articles showing how corrupt the idol industry in Japan is…
Come on Sankaku, mainstream sites only show the good sides of it, almost doing free PR work for them.
Someone has to talk about the ugly dark sides!
What could possess someone to buy 1000 CDs of anything? Someone tell me. Why would you want that many? Votes aside, unless its a super cheap game or something of resell value on Ebay, you don’t need more than 1 or 2 copies lol
For some reason it feels like all this akb-stuff is just a cover-up to distract from something much more controversial.
But what?
Is it China-related or an internal political scandal?
It’s just a big deal online every year. AKB fans are active and antifans counter this by watching for this kind of news. I’m gonna check out AKB on google trends, see how big they get around may-june
This is the same kind of idiot that buys a picture of a Playstation or an xbox box for $500. I don’t really have any sympathy for people like this, that get scammed so easily. Those people really don’t belong on the internet. And make the rest of us look bad.
The good news, for this chump, is that yahoo auction used actual Japanese banks for payment. So he should have little issue getting his money back, at his bank’s expense.
Seller was undeniably fishing for chumps with deliberate intent to scam cash out of an idiot. I find it hard to see a problem with that though…