A Taylor Swift fan is going viral on TikTok after sharing a storytime about how her tickets to the pop star’s upcoming show were “stolen” out of her Ticketmaster account.
Chelsea (@chelsea_bananas), a popular makeup artist, said she typically doesn’t post videos like this. However, in this instance, the content creator said she didn’t “know what else to do.”
The content creator said, too, that she wasn’t just making this for herself—but the “thousands” of others affected by similar issues.
“Sorry NOT sorry for yelling at the end,” Chelsea wrote in the accompanying video caption. She didn’t mince words when it came to her feelings toward Ticketmaster, either: “DO BETTER.” As of Sunday, her video had amassed more than 670,600 views.
How did the content creator lose her tickets?
Chelsea said she bought her tickets to Swift’s show more than a year ago. But when the time neared for the concert, she said she started receiving weird emails that her tickets were “successfully transferred” to two strangers (named Kenyon and Kane, respectively).
When she finally logged into her Ticketmaster account, Chelsea said she could see that her tickets were with someone else despite the content creator never authorizing this. And when she called Ticketmaster’s customer service, she said they offered little to no help.
“He puts in a claim with their fraud department… [and] doesn’t give me a time frame,” she said of the Ticketmaster representative. Chelsea added that a worker also told her to wait for an email for a phone call and said they couldn’t escalate her case further.
“As you can imagine we were extremely upset,” Chelsea said. “We couldn’t even believe that this was real.”
To make things worse, Chelsea said she’s heard of similar things happening to others. And, as a precaution, said she changed her Ticketmaster password just two days before the theft. Still, as of press time, Chelsea said her tickets were gone.
Chelsea blamed Ticketmaster for her predicament. “Ticketmaster has absolutely zero security on their website, or their app,” she said. “Literally none.”
She added, “By not protecting our tickets, not only is Ticketmaster allowing this to happen, they’re encouraging people to steal our tickets.”
@chelsea_bananas Sorry NOT sorry for yelling at the end. DO BETTER @Ticketmaster !!!!!!! @Tiffany Van Decker @Taylor Nation @Taylor Swift #ticketmaster #taylorswift #stolentickets #indy ♬ original sound – Chelsea Bananas 🍌
Ticketmaster theft is somewhat common
Chelsea said she’s heard of this happening with sporting events tickets, too. And when she shared what she was going through on social media, Chelsea said she saw that similar theft issues had affected “thousands” of others.
This appears to be true. According to ABC 7 Chicago, more than a dozen people recently came forward and said their digital tickets were stolen out of their accounts. Concertgoers from Los Angeles reported similar issues, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Ticketmaster said Chelsea and others were victims of hackers. In a statement to USA Today, a Ticketmaster spokesperson encouraged ticket holders to “protect themselves” by “setting a strong unique password for all accounts.”
“Overall, our digital ticketing innovations have greatly reduced fraud compared to the days of paper tickets and duplicated PDFs,” the statement read. “Having that digital history is also how we are able to investigate and successfully return tickets for fans. Scammers are looking for new cheats across every industry, and tickets will always be a target because they are valuable, so Ticketmaster is constantly investing in new security enhancements to safeguard fans.”
Of course, not everyone is impressed by these so-called enhancements. In her video, Chelsea said Ticketmaster needs to make it easier for people to get their tickets back.
“This is insane,” she said. “People spend their hard-earned money on these tickets and [Ticketmaster is] literally allowing people to steal our money from us.”
Viewers express frustration
In the comments of Chelsea’s video, several viewers shared their own Ticketmaster fraud stories.
“Omg this just happened to me!!! The only way I was able to get it corrected was by making a video and everyone’s help with tagging Ticketmaster,” one woman shared.
“Ticketmaster told me I bought a fake ticket a while back and kept my money… I bought off the app,” another shared.
Others said Ticketmaster needed to make it easier to retrieve tickets that were stolen.
“Ticketmaster and Stubhub are ruining live music for a whole generation of ppl,” one viewer said. “It never used to be like this, it doesn’t have to be like this. I just can’t figure out why they allow this to happen.”
“Like how can’t they just deactivate the tickets that were stolen and give u the new ones? Like it shouldn’t be that hard,” another said.
“If they transferred it why can’t they transfer it back,” a third person questioned.
Update 11:11am CT, Nov. 5: In an update to the Daily Dot, a spokesperson for Ticketmaster confirmed that the content creator’s tickets were recovered within 48 hours.
Chelsea recorded the aftermath of this in a recent post. “We did get our tickets back yesterday,” she said.
In fact, she suggested that a Ticketmaster worker was able to recover the tickets after only a short phone call.
“I don’t know if my video made a difference. I don’t know if we just called at the right time… but we got them back,” Chelsea said. “Still very ticked off about the situation. We should not have had to go through that stress.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Chelsea via TikTok comment and to Ticketmaster by email.
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