The Phantom Tickets of the Ticketmaster

Many have said be careful of what you order on the internet. This has been proven true by Ticketmaster’s actions. Last year the company sold “phantom tickets” to people for Bruce Springsteen’s Working on a Dream concert and has only recently settled with the Federal Trade Commission.

These “phantom tickets” were basically tickets that Ticketmaster didn’t have in hand. It sold the same group of tickets over and over again, as much as 1,600 times. Many consumers, some with receipts for the tickets in question, weren’t told about this problem for as long as three months. The ticket company also directed people to its reseller site where it scalped people by charging up to $400 for a $90 ticket.

What’s worse is that this is not limited to just one concert. Apparently Ticketmaster has done this for 14 of Springsteen’s concerts.

Now that Ticketmaster is part of Live Nation Entertainment through a recent merger, it has settled the matter with the FTC this past Thursday. There will be refunds for those 14 concerts as well as close monitoring of Ticketmaster in the future to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Even with this matter supposedly settled and other sites being warned against such deceptive practices, this will make consumers think twice about ordering tickets online.