Greg's Corner

Online ticket sales are rip-offs

And I’m not even talking about the exorbitant service fees that legal ticket vendors add on.

Anyway if you’re looking to buy tickets to that sold out concert, game or show you may have considered looking to online marketplaces in hopes for finding a pair of tickets at a reasonable price. Best of luck to you since finding tickets like that is almost like finding the Holy Grail but here are some tips to use in order to avoid being scammed.

The first is being asked to wire the payment to the seller. This is a good tip to keep in mind with just about any online transaction. If someone asks you to wire the money to them through services like MoneyGram or Western Union it’s more than likely a scam. In cases like this the tickets never existed and the seller is almost impossible to track and you’ll lose your money and have no tickets. While those wiring services are legitimate services for sending money to people you know they are used heavily by scammers.

Another tip to keep in mind is to never buy the copy of an e-ticket from someone online. There’s nothing stopping someone from buying an e-ticket with a stolen credit card then selling copies of the e-ticket to multiple victims.

This last item isn’t as much of a tip as it is an explanation. You usually can’t defend yourself against counterfeiters. Once you’ve been sold a counterfeit ticket you’ve already lost and you have little recourse against the scammer. Counterfeits range from cancelled tickets that were charged on stolen credit cards to tickets that were printed on a computer that look so genuine it’s almost impossible to tell apart from the real thing.

With the summer months upon us many of these activities will be in full swing. Don’t let yourself fall into one of these traps.