Christine Lunn's six tickets, with a face value of $75 each. She paid a total of $852.59 for them.

Snapping up precious All Blacks tickets should have made Christine Lunn happy. But just the sight of them leaves her feeling guilty.

The Kapiti Coast woman paid $852 for six Westpac Stadium tickets, unaware that their face value was $75 each.

As of Thursday evening, there were still blocks of six tickets available online for $75 for the test against Wales on June 18.

MONIQUE FORD/ FAIRFAX NZ Lunn, who was buying tickets online for the first time, said she felt "absolutely gutted" at paying so much for them.

Lunn went on to the Ticketmaster site in May to buy tickets for her husband, son and their friends. It was the first time she had tried to buy tickets online, preferring to buy them at the Ticketek counter in Waikanae's New World.

"I put in 'All Blacks versus Wales', it came up with a selection. I thought I'd clicked on Ticketmaster, and I didn't realise it said Ticketmaster Resale."

She had unwittingly entered Ticketmaster's sister site: a platform for reselling tickets.

She saw a block of six she wanted. "They were $141.34 each, so we thought at that price they've got to be half-decent seats."

It was only later that a friend told her the site was a platform for resold tickets.

She contacted Ticketmaster Resale and asked for a refund, but was told she should have checked the small print.

Several weeks later, the tickets arrived, with their original $75 price printed clearly on them. An invoice showed Ticketmaster Resale had taken a $110 fee for the sale.

Lunn said she was "absolutely gutted", and felt responsible that family and friends had to pay almost double for seats somewhere near the back of the stands.

She had no idea such a level of scalping was happening in New Zealand, and "certainly not under Ticketmaster".

"The fact that Ticketmaster is condoning this is what annoys me."

Trade Me, which is also reselling tickets to the game, said the practice was not illegal, but pointed out that Ticketmaster had strongly opposed it in the past.

The two companies had had a "robust relationship" over the matter. "We note that they are now providing a secondary market, and that's interesting," Jon Duffy, head of trust and safety at Trade Me, said.

New Zealand Rugby head of marketing Todd Barberel said the union felt for fans "who think they're being ripped off in this way".

"The site she purchased from is clearly labelled Ticketmaster Resale. It also states that prices will generally exceed face value, so customers need to have a careful look and weigh that up before purchasing."

He said more than 200,000 test tickets were sold annually, but New Zealand Rugby heard of very few cases of scalping.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment confirmed there was no law against ticket scalping.

The only exception was events covered by the Major Event Management Act, communications adviser Casey Hamilton Harrison said. If the government deemed something a major event, tickets could not be resold for more than the purchased price.

"While many people reselling tickets are legitimately selling at a fair price, others are reselling to profit," she said.

"Check with the event organiser where official tickets are being sold, and what the face value of tickets is to ensure you are getting a fair deal and your ticket will be valid to gain entry to the event."

Ticketmaster has been asked to comment.

TICKETMASTER RESALE

* The Ticketmaster Resale site says it is an "open marketplace for the sale and purchase of live event tickets".

* "The majority of tickets may exceed face value and prices are set by the sellers of the tickets.

* "Ticketmaster Resale does not sell tickets, set ticket prices or control the ticket inventory available on the website – we provide the platform from which other people can buy and sell their tickets."