Ticket fraud is becoming a huge problem and when there is a big event coming up it’s pretty much guaranteed that there are some scammers eager to make some money off of it. With the easing of COVID restrictions, people are back into attending events in full force. This makes ticket fraud something to especially be vigilant of. Action Fraud reported losses of £1.6 million due to ticket fraud from April 2018 and 2019 and the average reported loss was a huge £365 but the extent of this may be larger than what we even know.
Ticket fraud occurs in many different ways, so it’s important to be aware of this to know how to spot it. It may be that scammers set up fake websites to offer tickets to sell that have already sold out or are not yet for sale. You may hand over the cash and the tickets never turn up or it’s a fake ticket when you turn up for the event. How can you protect yourself?
Stay away from unauthorised sources
One way to know you are buying from trusted sources is to check with the event organiser for the official distribution list, so you can find out who to trust. Another way of running some checks is to find out whether the vendor is a member of Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers, also known as STAR. If they are part of STAR then the vendor has signed up to follow strict governing standards. You can also get help from STAR should you have any issues.
Another helpful tip would be to find out whether the ticket reseller has a proper office and landline rather than a PO box. You should also search the website yourself on your browser rather than following links from social media as this can often be a scam. Carefully look at the website address that you are using as well as fraudsters often create websites that have very similar names or addresses to well-known ticket sellers.
If you are buying from Facebook marketplace or similar networks, one way to see whether you can trust the seller is by taking a quick look at their profile. Do you have mutual friends? Do they live nearby? If they live in a foreign country it’s likely a scam. Do they have a lot of followers? Are the followers of the same demographic? Do they post regularly? Are these posts interacted with by friends? Sometimes scammers can have very convincing profiles so make sure you have done enough checks before entrusting large amounts of money
Check the ticket details
If the tickets don’t include details as such as block, row, and seat details they could likely be fake so always look out for this or ask.
Padlocked payments
You should only be purchasing from sites that have encrypted payment which can be indicated with the padlock symbol. This signifies that the payment is secure. You should also check that the URL begins with ‘HTTPS’ where the ‘s’ indicates it is secure.
Use credit cards
Always try and use credit cards when purchasing tickets as you are entitled to more rights. This is because the credit card provider has joint liability in delivering the purchase so if it is ticket fraud, you could get your money back. You should never transfer money directly into someone’s account as this is harder to recover. Thus, you should try and opt for using PayPal.
Offering the impossible
If you are seeing tickets being advertised for a sold-out event, then it is very likely to be ticket fraud. Scammers will take advantage of desperation and often people fall into their traps. If you see something that is too good to be true, then it probably is.
These tips are some ways to help spot a scam and protect your money but fraudsters are becoming increasingly creative with their cons so it is important to always stay aware of common forms of ticket fraud.
About Vivus Create: We are not your conventional events platform and we’ll never try to be. Vivus Create was built with 2 things in mind, maximising the event organiser’s revenue and creating a sociable experience. To learn more on how to get started with events, check out this blog post or if you would like to get started right away, check vivus create web or our app out.