Picture this: You bought concert tickets for an upcoming Usher show in Atlanta. The tickets were cheap because his previous shows were canceled due to slow ticket sales. But the next time you checked your Ticketmaster account, your Usher tickets were gone.
Ticketmaster customers across Atlanta are seeing tickets being stolen out of their accounts.
Customers told Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray that the tickets were transferred and claimed by other people.
Gwinnett County resident Annie Wells had tickets to Disney on Ice and rapper Post Malone stolen out of her account.
“I opened my Ticketmaster app to see four of our tickets for the event on Sunday had been claimed by this random name and they were gone,” Wells said.
Seattle resident Virginia Lasky saw 14 tickets disappear.
“When I clicked on the tickets one by one, it showed they had all been transferred and claimed,” Lasky said.
In an SEC filing, Ticketmaster blamed a data breach of a third-party cloud database.
The hackers stole information and tickets of millions of Ticketmaster customers.
Ticketmaster claims tickets have been reissued and ticketing innovations have reduced fraud.
“Overall, our digital ticketing innovations have greatly reduced fraud compared to the days of paper tickets and duplicated PDFs. Having that digital history is also how we are able to investigate and successfully return tickets for fans.” Ticketmaster said in a statement.
Singer Usher was scheduled to launch his “Past, Present, Future” tour at State Farm Arena in Atlanta in August. But the concerts were postponed until December due to low ticket sales.
The 45-year-old crooner blamed “fatigue” and a neck injury for the cancellations. Since then, a handful of his shows have been sold out in Washington, DC and California.
