Exclamation New Policy: Lift Ticket Voucher Sales No Longer Allowed

[Breeze]

From a lowly ticket agent , I thank you for making this modification to forum policy. It is a good thing to look forward to partnership and understanding that the revenue stream for ski areas and ski resorts is quite slim, and cannot support parking-lot-entrepreneurs.

Breeze

[ckofer]

There is nothing lowly about being a ticket agent. You are often the first person with whom many of us deal on a ski day. A positive experience at ticket counter carries on into the day! The same can be said for the folks who help keep the parking lots efficient on the busy days and the lift attendants who help to reflect your fun while they get to watch chairs being loaded.

[madskier6]

Originally Posted by riverc0il

Just out of curiosity, any legal types know the exact legal aspects of resale of lift tickets? Just because a business makes a policy does not make it legally true. For example, what if publishers starting putting fine print on a book that it could not be resold (not an on par example as one is an item and the other is a service, but you get the jist). Lots of times business say you can't do something when in fact they do not have any legal ground to stand on. Just curious if the law backs this up when it comes to resale of lift tickets after they have been purchased or transfer of lift tickets at the same price.

From a legal perspective, this is simply a contract law issue. The resort can put into its contract with skiers (recipients of vouchers in this case) whatever lawful restrictions it wants to. If you don't like the restrictions, don't sign the contract (i.e. don't accept the voucher). Once you accept the voucher, you've got to abide by their conditions/restrictions. That's why they have all the fine print on daily lift tickets so they can later pull your pass if you ski out of control or on closed trails.

BTW, if a publisher wanted to restrict resales of its books, it could legally do so. The problem would be with enforcement, not to mention the bad PR to the publisher that would result. But from a legal perspective, they could do it.

[MichaelJ]

Originally Posted by madskier6

BTW, if a publisher wanted to restrict resales of its books, it could legally do so.

Doesn't the first-sale doctrine prohibit them from making such restrictions?

[madskier6]

Originally Posted by MichaelJ

Doesn't the first-sale doctrine prohibit them from making such restrictions?

Yes, you are correct. My bad for not looking into copyright law specifics before I posted.

I obviously don't know a lot about copyright law. I was merely trying to point out that in certain contractual situations, one party can set the rules (to a certain degree) subject to the other party's agreement. This also means that when one party has greater bargaining power (as with ski resorts setting the terms of their lift tickets), the other party has to either accept it or go somewhere else for its needs. I should have known, however, that copyright law has its own set of standards.