Features
Coldplay Fans Fooled By Ticket Scam
Instead of enjoying an evening being entertained by Coldplay, nearly 20 fans spent time filing reports at the police station in Montreal after finding out they had purchased fake concert tickets.
Eva Romano is one fan who thought she was buying tickets to see Coldplay perform at Montreal’s Bell Centre Aug. 9 when she contacted a man claiming to be a U.S. ticket broker via the online classified site Kijiji, a subsidiary of eBay. She met the man in April and paid him $200 for two tickets valued at $40 each, according to The Canadian Press.
Scott Legato / RockStarProPhotography.com – Coldplay
The Palace Of Auburn Hills, Auburn Hills, Mich.
When Romano arrived at the Bell Centre Aug. 9, an employee at the 21,500-capacity venue told Romano that the two pieces of papers she purchased actually had a bar code for a previous Green Day show, the CP reported.
Romano spoke to other Coldplay fans at the police station and found they had similar descriptions of the alleged con artist.
Montreal police received 17 complaints from ticket buyers but Const. Manuel Couture told the CP it was too soon to comment on whether a single suspect was behind all of the scams.
Promoter evenko released the following statement to Pollstar in response to the incident:
“The Bell Centre and evenko strongly advise against buying tickets from a third party. We only guarantee the validity of tickets that are purchased at the official box offices or from authorized vendors (e.g. some fan clubs will sell their tickets and/or VIP packages themselves).
“It’s impossible for us to determine the validity of a ticket purchased from an unauthorized reseller (street resellers (scalpers), classified websites) before the event. The validity will be confirmed at the door, at the moment of the event.
“The Bell Centre and evenko would like to remind everyone that buying tickets from unauthorized vendors and resellers (scalpers) means putting your trust and your money in the hands of a stranger and that it represents a risk of fraud.”