Eight warning signs when buying concert tickets online

Eight things that should worry you

• A guarantee that you will get a ticket. Nobody can deliver that. It is the clearest sign, and the most common.
• Proof only sent privately. A private screenshot could be someone else’s order, or an edited one. Proof must be public and re-checkable.
• A new account or page. Check the creation date and posting history, not the follower count.
• Pressure to pay immediately. "One slot left", "transfer within ten minutes" exists to stop you checking.
• A price well below face value. For a sold-out show, that is almost always a trap.
• Vague fees. A service fee that is unclear, or appears after the ticket does, is a bad sign.
• Comments disabled or constantly deleted. A place that will not let people describe a bad experience has bad experiences to hide.
• Requests for irrelevant information. Nobody needs your banking password or an OTP to buy you a ticket.

How to check before paying

These three take about ten minutes and remove most of the risk:

• Open the public proof album and read the oldest posts, not the newest. A long history is hard to fake.
• Read the comments on those old posts. Real customers come back to thank or ask follow-ups there.
• Search the service name together with "scam" on Google and in fan groups. If there is a problem, someone has usually said so.

About deposits

Deposits are normal here — whoever camps has to pay real money when their turn comes, and cannot carry the risk of a customer walking away. The question is not whether a deposit is asked, but what you were able to verify before paying it.

A deposit to a service with months of public proof is a different proposition from a deposit to an account made last week.

If you have already paid and suspect a scam

• Save every piece of evidence now: message screenshots, the transfer receipt, links to the seller’s page. Scammers delete accounts quickly.
• Contact your bank as soon as possible about whether the transaction can be traced or reversed.
• Report it to the police where you live, with the evidence you saved.
• Post a public warning in the show’s fan groups — you are rarely the only one, and it helps the next person.