A major fan of WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark was pumped to get tickets to watch the basketball pro play the Chicago Sky in June, but when she tried to use her tickets, something went wrong.
When she found herself out more than $1,000, she asked NBC 5 responds for help.
“When Caitlin Clark declared for the WNBA, I pulled off to the road, and I went on one of the apps to go and get tickets right away for the Sky,” said the super fan, who we’ll call Jackie to protect her privacy.
She said she immediately went on the third party retail site Tick Pick and bought four tickets to watch the Fever play the Sky. She forked over a total of $600.
The tickets were transferred from Tick Pick to her Ticketmaster account, which is common practice, and everything seemed fine until she got to the game.
“I scanned all four tickets, and they showed up as they’re not working,” said Jackie.
Stunned, she went to the Ticketmaster window for help.
“[The ticket agent] said, ‘Oh, it looks like you transferred all of your tickets last week.’ And I was like, ‘To who, because I haven’t been in my account.’ And he said, ‘Well there’s no way to recover this, because you’ve already transferred them to other people.'”
But Jackie said she didn’t transfer her tickets to anyone and believed her Ticketmaster account had been hacked. But she didn’t want to leave the game without seeing Clark play, so she asked Ticketmaster about her options.
“Ticketmaster said, ‘We have some tickets available, you should buy these.’ So we bought them,” said Jackie.
Her new seats for the Fever-Sky game were far worse and far more expensive at $1,300.
After the game, Jackie said she called Tick Pick and Ticketmaster numerous times and was eventually promised a refund from Ticketmaster.
But Jackie said Ticketmaster mistakenly sent her a refund of $129 for a comedy show instead of the lost Fever tickets. That’s when she asked NBC 5 Responds for help.
We contacted the two companies about her situation.
Tick Pick told NBC 5 Responds they have no control over the “primary ticketing platform’s cybersecurity practices” and Jackie would have to get help from Ticketmaster.
A Ticketmaster representative told us that Jackie’s Ticketmaster account was likely compromised by a bad actor in an isolated incident.
The company said it is refunding Jackie the $1,350 she paid for replacement tickets to the game, as a “one-time courtesy.” It’s also replacing her season tickets to the Green Bay Packers, because they can’t tell if those tickets were also compromised in the hack.
Jackie isn’t so sure this is an “isolated incident.” In the past month, news of two data breaches at the company made headlines.
In May, Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, confirmed that hackers were able to obtain the names and credit card data of more than 500 million Ticketmaster customers. Two weeks later, another breach was announced, but the company hasn’t revealed how many customers were impacted in that incident. Ticketmaster has since offered impacted customers 12 months of free identity monitoring.
“I had no idea what happened,” Jackie said. “And they didn’t reach out to anybody about changing passwords or I definitely would have right away.”
Jackie has since secured her account, and she’s glad she could count on NBC 5 Responds to help her get her money back, a total of $1,352.
Ticketmaster also told us that if you bought tickets through a third-party site like Tick Pick, you should go through the third-party for a refund.
Here are some key takeaways:
- Prevent ticket theft by regularly changing your password for any ticketing websites or accounts you have.
- Set up two- factor authentication on your accounts. That way, if someone figures out your password, they won’t be able to log into your account unless they have access to your phone.