How I Almost Bought Scam Taylor Swift Tickets

I definitely feel like an idiot for this one and I can fully admit it! In my desperation to see Taylor Swift while on vacation last weekend, I did every single thing they tell you not to do and almost got scammed out of money trying to get tickets. Please don't roll your eyes at my for this.

I went to visit one of my best friends in Houston, where it is warmer and the sun actually shines at this time of the year! We wanted to see Taylor while she was in town and decided to try to get tickets to the Saturday or Sunday show. We tried most of the day on Saturday. Ticketmaster was releasing tickets at random all day but we weren't fast enough and after many failed attempts, the show started and we were out of luck.

We decided to get up early Sunday and try again, lining up to get to the box office. When we struck out there, we went back to the drawing board and spent a long time scouring resale pages and social media. With a few hours to showtime, my friend got a message from someone saying they had tickets.

This scammer was a bit smarter than the rest, using a normal name and what appeared to be a real Instagram account. She told my friend she'd seen her post asking if anyone had tickets and decided to respond because she had two. She said she needed to sell hers because she was in Ohio with her sister who just had a baby. This seemed somewhat legitimate when you look past the fact she had waited until a few hours before the show to sell them.

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At first, the scammer seemed real. They showed us what seemed to be legitimate tickets to the concert and not the clearly fake ones all the other scammers use. After an hour, things started to take a turn. They wanted payment on Venmo and said they didn't use PayPal. Out of desperation, we tried to send fifty bucks to this person via Venmo to show them we weren't scamming them. (Reverse psychology scammer trick, I guess.)

Well, the Venmo got rejected and the scammer said it was her brother's account and to try a different account that was her brother's friend. We did try, even though this was so clearly a scam, and it got rejected again. Clearly, something was up but we didn't want to give up.

The scammer then told us to Apple Cash their phone and send them a picture. Why would we need to send a picture when it notifies the recipient right then and there? We texted the number and never heard back. The scammer said it was a business phone and they couldn't text from it - but they could accept cash? Odd.

We knew it was a scam but we decided to see how far the scammer would go. They went as far as to send us a fake receipt for the tickets, which had grammatical errors and typos. My friend still wanted to believe it was real even though we both knew it was fake. We were so embarrassed we fell for it, even though in our heart we were just clinging to hope and knew that the tickets were probably fake from the beginning.

There were so many warning signs from the random rejected Venmo accounts to the fact that the scammer waited a few hours before the show to sell and seemed to be in no hurry. Do not be like me in this instance. No matter how desperate you are for Taylor Swift tickets, do not engage and buy tickets from Ticketmaster or the box office instead. Sigh.

With the Minneapolis dates coming up this summer, be on the lookout for scams like this. Any person selling tickets on Twitter is probably scamming you, as I learned. The same can be said for Facebook and Instagram. Stay smart - unlike me in my moment of desperation!