A B.C. resident is speaking out after he says Taylor Swift tickets were stolen from his Ticketmaster account.
“I never thought anything like this would happen,” Jeremy Brady told Consumer Matters.
The northern B.C. resident says in August 2023, he purchased two Taylor Swift tickets through Ticketmaster for over $2,000 for the November concert in Toronto.
However, this past September, Brady says the tickets vanished from his Ticketmaster account and were transferred to someone else.
“I saw an email from Ticketmaster saying I had accessed my account from Corpus Christi, Texas which obviously was strange,” said Brady.
That was followed by another email from Ticketmaster which read: “Your Ticket Transfer Is On The Way To Joss.”
Brady says he was in shock and reached out to Ticketmaster immediately for help, but says for over two weeks he wasn’t getting any answers from the company.
“The biggest frustration is — one, not being able to talk to a person — and two, just getting no update,” said Brady.
“You leave your phone number, a short message of what’s going on and then you never hear back from them.”
Consumer Matters reached out to Ticketmaster on Brady’s behalf and a day later his tickets were restored to his account.
Ticketmaster said: “Fans should be aware unauthorized ticket transfers are often a result of poor password management, like using the same password across multiple websites.
“Fans should use a strong unique password for their Ticketmaster account, as they would a bank account.”
Brady says he’s thankful he reached out to Global News.
“Until I talked to Consumer Matters until you guys reached out, absolutely nothing was happening,” he said.
Still, Brady says he wants answers from Ticketmaster explaining why his tickets disappeared from his account in the first place.
“It’s just unfortunate, Ticketmaster when it comes to customer service, it doesn’t seem too interested in helping their customers,” said Brady.
This past July, Ticketmaster informed Canadian customers of a data security incident stating that an unauthorized third party obtained information from a cloud database hosted by a third-party data services provider.
Technology expert Andy Baryer, of Handy Andy Media, says this incident could have been prevented if Ticketmaster had better cybersecurity safeguards in place.
“Ticketmaster had no incentive to up their security even though they had a security breach recently. It seems they haven’t learned their lesson and I think the reason why is — there is no competition in that industry.
“They really have no incentive to innovate, especially with their security practices.”
Scammers are using creative ways of parting would-be concertgoers from their money.
Last month, police in Ontario warned about the growing risks of buying Taylor Swift tickets on Facebook. They said scammers are hacking into legitimate accounts and making offers that aren’t real.
Taylor Swift is scheduled to play six Eras Tour shows at Toronto’s Rogers Centre across two weekends – from Nov. 14 to 16 and Nov. 21 to 23.