Ticketing Scams

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) recently has received increasing numbers of complaints from consumers who have been conned into buying fake tickets for sports, music and other events.

PR Company 3 Monkeys Communications in conjunction with the

OFT wanted to raise awareness of the issue and help consumers

differentiate between legitimate and fake ticket websites.

Their objectives were to:

- Increase the awareness of online ticketing scams amongst all consumers with a focus on festival fans.

- Drive people to Consumer Direct, OFT’s consumer-facing website, where consumers can lodge complaints and find information and advice.

- Work with local authority Trading Standards Services across the country to drive grass-roots awareness.

They called their campaign “Just Tick It”. They created a simple, short checklist of points for consumers to “tick off” when buying tickets online.

Based on consumer research they did they found that 1 in 5 people knew someone who had bought tickets from scam websites. 1 in 12 had been scammed themselves losing on average £80 each.

Therefore the digital agency created a fake ticket website, linked to a

page with tips on how to work out if a ticket website is genuine or not.

My question is 'how safe do we feel when purchasing tickets online? Is the apparent convenience and ease with which it takes a risk worth taking'?