[rtanaka]

Has this happened to anyone? What would happen if you showed up and find that your ticket is invalid. I'm guessing it varies by venue but is there any recourse? I can't imagine they'd just turn you away without at least a little investigation.

[dan1234]

The door staff are only really interested in getting people safely into and out of the venue.

They'd probably just tell you to complain at the ticket office (if it's still open they might be able to verify your credit card?) or phone next day.

[fredup]

You almost certainly aren't going to see the show.

In theory it should be simple to identify who you are in conflict with if the ticket is not general admission. They would just have to send an usher to the seat. However, it is difficult to determine who defrauded who without a whole lot of investigation.

You would have to establish the entire chain of custody for both of the tickets. Three possibilities with different culprits are: the original purchaser double sold the tickets, a third-party got the barcode and sold a fraudulent ticket to whoever is in your seat, or the person in your seat made the fraudulent ticket themselves.

[nsfmc]

this hasn't happened to me, but i witnessed it at Outside Lands SF this year and it is devastating to watch. there is basically zero recourse for the buyer of the ticket that scans invalid and many of them have very legitimate looking pdfs and emails they got from craigslist.

neither the ticketmaster folks nor the venue folks tend to be super compassionate in my experience. it's a real mess though, the venues often have no in-and-out privileges (possibly due to how scanning invalidates some 24-hour key), so even as a law-abiding consumer, you're stuck at an event for the whole time just to deal with ticketmaster's implementation details.

i'm sure others have said this, but that is definitely a business that wants disrupting. there's so many bits of tech that could make this experience better and safer for consumers, but i suspect ticket fees are more profitable than user experience.

[cdcarter]

I just worked admissions for a festival in Seattle, and we have started seeing scalpers actually walk with the customer to the gate, and verify they get entrance. If the scalped ticket isn't valid, the scalper will refund right there. People have stopped trusting scalpers with print outs, because they often don't work. The resellers are realizing this and offering guarantee.

As an aside, many festivals and venues don't disallow re-entry due to TM implementation (I've been to enough TM ticketed events that have re-entry). They ban in-and-out so that you cannot go elsewhere to drink or eat without the festival surcharge and kickback.

[girvo]

Disrupting ticketing is such a painful thing, but its something I've been passionate about for a number of years. Unfortunately, the way things are run at least in Australia means that venues have exclusive agreements with various ticketing providers, so it becomes exceedingly capital intensive to break in :(

[codyb]

It's generally not the people at the doors job to investigate. If your ticket doesn't scan they assume you're the one with the fake or that someone went in and came out with multiple tickets to get more people in.

Generally, as far as I've seen, you'd be SOOL. (Shit out of luck, is that an acronym yet?)

[ilikemustard]

From what I've seen, the acronym typically doesn't include "of", and is simply "SOL".

[bjohnso5]

I think it's generally abbreviated that way because it's phrased "Shit Outta Luck"