ORLANDO, Fla. — An Orange County man had tickets to one of the hottest sporting events in Central Florida.
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Four days before the UCF vs. Colorado football game, the tickets were suddenly transferred from Andrew McCoy’s account to a stranger without his permission.
He woke up to an email from Ticketmaster with the message:
“Your Ticket Transfer Is On The Way To Baby!”
And then a minute later:
“Big Jugg Has Accepted Your Ticket Transfer!”
The messages were sent at 12:30 a.m. while he was asleep. He claimed a Ticketmaster worker assured him on the phone they would help get his tickets back.
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But he showed us online chats from later in the week where he asked:
“Will this be resolved before the game this Saturday?”
Ticketmaster replied: “Your order is still under review. Please wait for our fulfillment team’s update.”
But that update didn’t come before the game.
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“They did not care,” said McCoy. “And I approached them many times as nice as I could to let them know that, hey, the game is this Saturday. All I want to do is go to the game.”
A quick search saw dozens of Ticketmaster customers claiming they also had tickets stolen from their accounts.
Many complaints were posted in the months following Ticketmaster’s massive data breach in May, which stole personal information from as many as 500 million customers.
As part of a statement, Ticketmaster wrote:
“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 the situation and restore fans’ tickets.”
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The company also noted Ticketmaster passwords were not exposed in the data breach from earlier this year.
McCoy made it to the game only because he shelled out even more money to buy new tickets. The new tickets were more expensive and farther away from the action.
It was only after he contacted Action 9 that he finally at least got his money refunded by Ticketmaster.
“I just think it just shows the major disconnect between, you know, major companies and and and how they feel about us, people on the outside, they don’t really care,” he said.
Ticketmaster suggested the best way fans can protect themselves is by having a strong password on all accounts--especially their personal email accounts - and said the company is always investing in new security enhancements.
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