The Internet auction site eBay has announced it will withdraw from sale on its auction web site tickets for the forthcoming Live 8 charity concert.
More than 100 pairs of tickets appeared earlier yesterday on the site, attracting bids of up to £1,000. The appearance of the tickets prompted Bob Geldof to call for a boycott of eBay Inc.
"The people who are selling these tickets on Web sites are miserable wretches who are capitalizing on people's misery," the musician said.
Later, eBay Managing Director Doug McCallum said the company would take the tickets off its auction site, although the company said reselling charity concert tickets was not illegal in Britain.
"We've listened carefully to our customers," McCallum told Britain's ITV television. "Overwhelmingly the voice is that they would like us to take down the listing."
Geldof said he was glad eBay was removing the tickets from auction.
"Well done for taking them down," Geldof told Sky News. "But it was despicable, and they should have thought about it before they did this."
There are a total of 150,000 tickets for the show in London's Hyde Park - one of several Live 8 concerts being held July 2 also in Philadelphia, Paris, Berlin and Rome.
More than 2 million people have applied by text message for London tickets, making it history's largest text-message lottery, according to the Guinness Book of World Records