Scam Tries to Ruin Your Night Out

If you have ever tried to buy concert tickets, you know it can sometimes be very difficult. They sell out quickly. But there is always a way to get there, if you really want to go. Concertgoers and fans of other live entertainment will turn to resellers for those tickets if necessary; and scammers know it. Recently, one unlucky theater fan found out that Craigslist might not be the best place to buy tickets to a popular sold-out Broadway show. She paid $350 for tickets to see the show, but when she arrived at the door months later, she found out her tickets were counterfeit.

The best way to avoid being scammed in this way is to always buy tickets from a reputable and well-known service that specializes in selling entertainment tickets. Sites like this have better fraud prevention measures and most of them do allow transfer of tickets. If possible, skip the online purchase and go to the venue directly and get your tickets at the box office.

If the online seller asks you to do a wire transfer or pay with gift cards, move to the next one. That’s a red flag that it may be a scam.

Scammers are getting better and better at making fake tickets look authentic and sometimes it is impossible to tell until you get to the venue and they turn you away. And in some cases, the scammers try a different approach from selling them for what you may feel is highway robbery; they buy a bunch of real tickets, post them for sale at bargain prices, then cancel the transaction or re-transfer them after they receive money. This allows them to either get their tickets paid for or rip off multiple people using the same tickets.

Now, go put on that favorite concert t-shirt, grab those legitimate tickets, and head out the door. When you get to the venue, you will be able to scream for your favorite act rather than run to the hills back home.

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