A Taylor Swift fan had $3,500 concert tickets stolen from her Ticketmaster account. Here's what happened next.

By Charles Passy

The ticketing giant is facing issues with Swifties whose accounts are hacked, resulting in their seats winding up in other people's hands

When Blaine Heck learned that her family had purchased tickets on StubHub for her and her niece to attend a Taylor Swift Eras Tour show in New Orleans this October, she was thrilled beyond belief. Not only was it a chance to see an artist she loves, but the seats were in a prime location, costing $3,500 for the pair.

"It was a legendary gift for both of us," said Heck, 36, a resident of Essex, Conn.

But the gift quickly turned into a nightmare, according to Heck, when she discovered that someone had hacked into her Ticketmaster account - where Heck had transferred the tickets as required in order to use them - and swiped the pair. Numerous calls to Ticketmaster with lengthy hold times followed in an effort to resolve the matter. Finally, Heck said she reached a representative who informed her that the company would look into the matter, but that it might take up to five days to investigate.

In the end, Heck only had to wait a day: The tickets were restored to her account within hours after MarketWatch contacted Ticketmaster for this story about Heck's situation as well as broader issues the company is facing. But Heck remains distrustful of the ticketing giant, which is part of concert-industry behemoth Live Nation Entertainment (LYV).

"I wasted a whole day of panicking. No one should have to go through this," she told MarketWatch.

Heck noted that she doesn't know what caused the problem and said it could have started with a possible hacking of her email account. But in the end, she just knows the tickets were gone from her Ticketmaster account.

Other people have also found themselves in Heck's situation, according to numerous media reports, when seats that were theoretically safely stored in their Ticketmaster accounts were stolen.

'When it comes to security and Ticketmaster, these are not two words that go together.'Cybersecurity expert Andrew Plato

Indiana resident Savannah Van Skyhawk also saw her tickets to a Swift show in Indianapolis in November vanish from the Ticketmaster platform, according to a report by local television station WTHR. But equally frustrating for Van Skyhawk was Ticketmaster's failure to quickly resolve the matter.

"They would just tell me, like, 'We'll call you in three to five days.' So, I'd wait three to five days, and they wouldn't call me," Van Skyhawk told WTHR. "I'd try calling them again, and then again, they'd say three to five days. It was just kind of a circle, like no one ever called me."

Van Skyhawk eventually saw the tickets restored to her account, but only after the station contacted Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster has had several issues in recent years with ticketing and hacking - in relation to the Eras Tour shows, which have been enormous sellers, and in general.

See also: Taylor Swift is Time's person of the year. Here's why she's also been a big financial story in 2023.

The problems Swift fans - or Swifties, as they're called - encountered trying to buy tickets when the Eras Tour shows first went on sale led to a U.S. Senate hearing on the matter.

More recently, Live Nation Entertainment has been sued by the Justice Department, which has alleged that its practices are monopolistic in nature.

This year, Ticketmaster also suffered a data breach. The company said at the time: "The database contained limited personal information of some customers who bought tickets to events in North America. ...This may include email, phone number, encrypted credit card information as well as some other personal information provided to us."

It's the kind of incident that prompts Andrew Plato, founder of Anitian, a cybersecurity company, to offer this assessment to MarketWatch: "When it comes to security and Ticketmaster, these are not two words that go together."

Thousands of complaints about Ticketmaster have also been filed with the Better Business Bureau, including ones related to user accounts being hacked and tickets stolen. Many of those complaints appear to have been resolved, however, per Ticketmaster comments on the site.

The company currently has a Better Business Bureau customer rating of 1.06 out of 5, based on reviews, although it has a higher grade of 3.8 out of 5 on the Trustpilot review site.

A Ticketmaster spokesperson defended the company's platform and services, telling MarketWatch: "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 like we did for Ms. Heck."

The spokesperson also noted that Ticketmaster buyers can help themselves by guarding against fraud on their own: "The top way fans can protect themselves is setting a strong unique password for all accounts - especially for their personal email, which is where we often see security issues originate. Scammers are looking for new cheats across every industry, and tickets will always be a target because they are valuable."

That's not disputed by cybersecurity experts, who say that issues these days involve all sorts of companies and that consumers must take heed, particularly by changing their passwords to something strong and unique, as Ticketmaster suggests. Perhaps the worst thing consumers can do is to have the same basic password across multiple sites, according to Steve Tcherchian, chief product officer of Xypro, a cybersecurity solutions company.

"Most people don't practice good cybersecurity," he told MarketWatch.

-Charles Passy

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09-28-24 0623ET

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