Fans say they're struggling to reverse ticket transfers

More fans in North Texas are telling us about their disappearing Ticketmaster tickets.

Earlier this month, our NBC 5 Responds team told you some consumers’ digital tickets were transferred without permission. Read on for steps you can take to secure your seats better.

'MY HEART SANK'

When Angela Perdue contacted NBC 5 Responds, time was running out. The Usher tickets Perdue purchased months earlier were gone, and the concert started in a few hours.

“I immediately got on the phone with Ticketmaster to try and iron it out,” Angela Perdue told NBC 5. “It was a struggle with them.”

Perdue said she believed the digital tickets were secure in her Ticketmaster account. So did Megan Clouse.

“I thought we were safe,” Clouse said. “We bought these tickets on presale through Ticketmaster.”

Clouse scored Taylor Swift seats last year.

“It was like winning the lottery,” Clouse told us.

Clouse's seven-year-old was counting down the days to the show in New Orleans until she saw emails from Ticketmaster saying her seats had been sent to someone else.

“I logged into my Ticketmaster account and, sure enough, it said they had been transferred to some long bogus email, and my heart sank,” said Clouse.

Perdue and Clouse said Ticketmaster’s fan support told them it would investigate. Each worried they wouldn’t hear back in time for their events.

SEEKING CUSTOMER SERVICE

That’s what happened to Rachel Reeves. She and her husband drove to Kansas City, Missouri, to see the Chiefs play. Hours before the September 15 game, Reeves said the tickets were transferred from her account.

“I was in a panic,” said Reeves.

She said she tried calling and messaging Ticketmaster fan support and couldn’t get anyone to help.

 “We're escalating, we're going to take care of you type of messages even one, two hours after the game was over,” Reeves told NBC 5.

However, it wasn’t a loss that day. In what Reeves thought would be a Hail Mary, she contacted the Chiefs’ fan experience team. Reeves said a representative heard her story and provided two tickets.

“She called me,” recalled Reeves. “I’m going to cry because it was so nice. Ended up telling me that the Chiefs wanted to take care of us.”

Reeves points out she paid nearly three hundred dollars in service fees to Ticketmaster, “They charge you an exorbitant amount of money for fees and don't provide any service.”

CONSUMERS QUESTION SECURITY

After we contacted Ticketmaster, it refunded Reeves’ service fees and restored Clouse and Perdue’s tickets—just as it did for the North Texas fans in a previous story we covered.

The consumers who contacted NBC 5 Responds said the unauthorized transfers happened in September and October. Earlier this year, Ticketmaster suffered a data breach on a third-party cloud platform. It said customer passwords were not exposed.

A Ticketmaster spokesperson told NBC 5 Responds that it recommends consumers strengthen their passwords, including passwords to personal email accounts where Ticketmaster sees security issues arise.

Angela Perdue said the Ticketmaster should do more to identify unauthorized ticket transfers.

“I should have received some sort of alert before somebody just… stealing my tickets. I should have got an alert on my phone the same way I get the tickets on my phone,” Perdue said.

Clouse told us she wants Ticketmaster to offer multi-factor authentication, “Just like if I log into my email from my husband's phone, I get so many ways to verify it's me. I'm getting text messages, emails, all of the things. But for this? There was nothing.”

Ticketmaster’s website says a two-factor authentication feature is activated the first time you try to print tickets or change your email address on any device.

Since our last report, NBC 5 Responds has also asked Ticketmaster—specifically—about additional security for ticket transfers and whether it could offer multi-factor authentication, an additional verification method, to log in. We haven’t received a response to those questions.

SECURE ONLINE ACCOUNTS

Eva Velasquez with the Identity Theft Resource Center said companies should enable multifactor authentication as an option for customers.

“Businesses are under the impression that inserting any friction is bad. This is beyond just Ticketmaster or airlines or those types of businesses,” said Velasquez.

“We need to get that message to companies that we will accept that friction. We understand it's important to protect us and we won't necessarily take our business elsewhere,” Velasquez added.

Those with Ticketmaster accounts can log in and change their password. Don’t use one you’ve used in the past or for another online account. Take the same steps to secure your personal email.

You can read more from the Federal Trade Commission about creating a strong password here.

You can read the ITRC’s recommendations via this link.

NBC 5 Responds is committed to researching your concerns and recovering your money. Our goal is to get you answers and, if possible, solutions and a resolution. Call us at 844-5RESPND (844-573-7763) or fill out our customer complaint form.