I hate hearing stories about people getting swindled by eBay and other websites when buying concert tickets

I heard yesterday that one of my friends paid £60 for a concert ticket to see Velvet Revolver in Leeds and she never received the ticket on time and this kind of thing has really angered me for ages. This is just another typical internet scam that happens to people all the time, but as well know, sold-out concert and other event tickets are bought-out by greedy scalpers (or touts as they are called in the UK) and people desperate to make a profit by selling them to fans online, but a lot of the time the tickets never even arrive on time for the buyer to attend the event they paid to go to in the first place.

Online marketplaces like eBay have increased their security and have been trying to stop fraud the best they can, but these scams still happen and I can't stand hearing about genuine fans of bands being ripped-off by these selfish bastards. Shows only sell-out because so many of the tickets are bought by touts to sell off at a profit on the internet or on the day of the event and it makes me sick.

My best advice is to only buy from reliable ticket agencies and when there is a show that is supposedly sold out that you want to go to, still go to the venue on the day of the show, but be sure to arrive a few hours early and ask any other fans waiting around whether they have a spare ticket before even thinking of handing your cash to one of the touts outside offering to buy or sell any spares. I always find that there are fans waiting around before shows whose friends can't attend and are desperate to sell a spare ticket to somebody who is not just there to make a profit. In the UK, the ticket touts hanging around before the shows even start are almost always the bootleg merchandise sellers you see afterwards and they all work in gangs, so they're best avoided unless there happens to be one of them offering to sell a ticket at face value once the doors open, because once the support bands are on, they're not going to sell the spare tickets for a profit and will be satisfied to get anything back for them.

I just hope my friend gets her £60 paid back if she never received what she paid for, because that it what I call shit customer service and I would be very annoyed if somebody stopped me from seeing Scott, Slash, Duff and Matt live again!