BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Local performance venues are trying to tackle the problem of scammers buying up tickets to resell at a higher price.
The Vermont Attorney General’s Office says it has received more than 2,500 scam reports so far this year, an increasingly frequent complaint.
“I am sure that I went to the Spruce Peak site. It came up and it showed that the tickets — for two tickets — was $71 each. I paid for it with my credit card and the receipt came back at $298,” said Jane Woodhouse of Peacham.
It’s a frustrating national problem now happening at the local level — ticket marketplace websites offering the same ticket at an inflated cost for everything from concerts to movie screenings.
“We are seeing it in very strange places. Like the night before Halloween, we are going to screen the first Harry Potter movie. It’s literally just a screening of a movie at this point everybody has seen,” said Spruce Peak’s Seth Soloway. “It’s a relatively new problem for Spruce Peak Arts, but it is now coming up a lot.”
Soloway says they are getting calls on a daily basis about markups. They blame bots buying up tickets to then be resold on another website. Take the Harry Potter movie he mentioned. Two tickets on the Spruce Peak website cost about $51. But on a ticket marketplace website, the same tickets are $50 each.
“I feel stupid because I usually am really savvy about that kind of thing,” Woodhouse said.
Concert and event ticket scams have been a national issue, and the federal government took notice earlier this year when it sued Live Nation-Ticketmaster for monopolizing the live concert industry.
Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York were among the states that joined the lawsuit this summer. “I think a lot of people thought they bought tickets on the third-party market. They are excited they got that ticket. Turns out it was just a scam. You want to make sure it’s a reliable person and also the place you are buying it from is reliable,” said Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark.
The AG’s office has tips to ensure you don’t get scammed buying tickets, or anything else you buy online — Do your research before you buy and use secure payment methods. Also, check the URL before buying to ensure you’re on the right website, and always be cautious with your personal information.
