Jim Winters, Director of Economic Crime at Nationwide reveals that one-in-four fans already hit by ticket scams. He gives advice on how to avoid being duped yourself.
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00:00So we see ticket scams impacting all events, but it's probably true to say that the higher profile the event, the higher chance of being scammed that you are.
00:09So right now, the trigger for our research was the fact that the Glastonbury resale is about to start.
00:16These are tickets that aren't taken up by people who originally applied.
00:19They go back online for sale and there's tremendous demand for quite a few, driven by hundreds of thousands of people chasing after just a handful of tickets.
00:30And this plays right into the scammer's hands.
00:33How big an issue is ticket fraud across the UK?
00:37So the research that we did suggested that one in four of the people surveyed had fallen for some sort of ticket scam, which for me was quite staggering.
00:46I've done this for a long time. Fraud and scams are the most common type of crime in the UK at the moment.
00:51It's 40% of all crime that's reported. But even I was surprised to hear one in four.
00:56It was a particular demographic, those that might be online, and it certainly showed that those between the age of 24, sorry, 25 and 34 were more prone to risk taking when it came to buying tickets for high profile events.
01:09But, yeah, the scale is staggering.
01:11Is the fear of missing out causing people to take risky choices?
01:16Yeah, it certainly is. The demographic I mentioned between 25 and 34, four in 10 of those surveyed said that they'd be willing to take a risk on a fake ticket if it meant they'd get a chance of going to that event.
01:31What would you say are the red flags then that people should look for when buying tickets?
01:35I think the best way to answer that question is talk about the things you can do to keep yourself safe.
01:40So, number one, always use legitimate ticket sales sites or authorised resellers.
01:46They're all accredited and you can check out the accreditation on their web pages.
01:50But also look for reviews of those outlets to make sure they're legitimate.
01:54Number two, always use your credit card or a formal payment platform that comes with a fraud guarantee like something like PayPal.
02:03PayPal. Never buy from social media. Don't buy from strangers. It's just too high risk.
02:09In fact, the mindset you should have when buying a resold ticket is could I be being scammed?
02:15Always go into that situation with that mindset that that's a high probability.
02:19And if you're a nationwide customer, you can use our scam checker service, which means you can call us before you make the payment.
02:25We'll check it out for you. And if it later turns out to be a scam, you'll get a full refund.