A concert-goer is warning others of potential risks when buying tickets on StubHub after purchasing a fake ticket on the reseller site for Sabrina Carpenter’s Toronto show.
Chris Jones tells Now Toronto he travelled from London, England to livestream the concert, something he regularly does for his 79,000 TikTok followers.
He says he paid $800 CAD for a general-admission pit ticket on StubHub on Nov 4. for the concert on Nov. 10. It was the first time he used the site to purchase a ticket for a concert, and says he had no concerns initially.
But it wasn’t until he started chatting with other concert-goers in line when he noticed an issue.
“We sort of compared tickets, and I was like, ‘my ticket looks completely different to all of yours,’” Jones said.
Jones, who joined the line at 12 p.m, waited until the box office opened at 5 p.m. to determine if his ticket was legitimate after being met with doubt. Immediately upon showing the box office worker his ticket, his nightmare came true.
“She straight away, without even fully needing to look, said, ‘That is not a ticket we accept,’” Jones said. “‘All the tickets that we accept at Scotiabank Arena have the Ticketmaster barcode.’”
According to the worker, Ticketmaster barcodes are long and horizontal. However, the barcode on Jones’ ticket was a square, and because of this, he had no way into the concert with the $800 ticket he paid for.
Luckily, StubHub offered Jones a new ticket as he stood outside the venue to which he quickly accepted, but unbeknownst to him, there was a catch that he’d have to wait an hour for the seller to release it, and if they did not release the ticket, he’d be issued a refund.
He quickly tried to cancel the order, but was told he must wait a full hour despite his refusal.
Jones says though he waited more than an hour for the ticket, StubHub refused to give him a refund, and by that time, the pit was already packed with fans, so he’d be forced to stand at the back. Refusing to wait around any longer, he decided to return back to his hotel.
“I was trying not to cry on my walk home… But yeah, I got to the hotel and had a cry,” he said. “I just went to sleep defeated,” he said.
Jones spoke out about the incident on his TikTok page which quickly went viral, leading to StubHub reaching out to him to offer a refund and help with getting him a ticket for Carpenter’s second night in Toronto.
Although he was able to finally attend the show, he says he won’t be buying tickets on the platform ever again and is now warning others to consider all options.
“Get it from Ticketmaster,” he said. “My advice is to buy from Ticketmaster. It might be more expensive, but they get delivered a lot quicker, and you know it’s reliable.”
Now Toronto reached out to StubHub for comment and is waiting for a response.
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