Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift is coming to Seattle for two shows at Lumen Field in July and if you weren’t able to grab tickets when the shows sold out in November, prepare for a major hit to your wallet if you want those tickets now.
The initial sale of tickets on Ticketmaster was plagued with headaches and many fans weren’t able to grab tickets before bots and scalpers overwhelmed the Ticketmaster website.
Ticketmaster was even called before Congress to explain why their ticket system failed.
Swift herself responded to the ticket sales debacle on her Instagram account, saying, “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,” according to CNN. “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”
Now, six months later, official Ticketmaster resale tickets aren’t available. Fans have very few options to grab these elusive tickets.
A peek at StubHub, a ticket resale company, offers nosebleed tickets for Sat., July 22, at Lumen Field, for $1,218 a ticket. The cheapest ticket on the floor is $3,419, as of this writing.
One fan told KIRO 7 she is a verified fan with “lover fest” priority, and she couldn’t get a ticket in November.
Fans avoiding scams are reluctant to use resale sites, since there have been plenty of stories of fans paying the raised prices, only to have their tickets not be available or finding out there were no tickets on the other end.
To avoid scams, some fans follow a Twitter account called @ErasTourResell, where fans can sometimes find other fans that are reselling tickets at face value, but finding tickets there is like “winning the lottery,” KIRO 7 was told.
Another fan told KIRO 7 that fans will ask potential sellers to send a screen recording of the sellers accessing their tickets and only using PayPal Goods and Services when exchanging money, as PayPal Goods and Services protects the seller and the buyer from scams.
The fan added new scammers have also started stealing other people’s screen recordings and splicing videos together. They may also hesitate to use PayPal when pressed.
Most of all, if it just doesn’t feel right, it may not be a safe purchase.
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