‘ANGRY F1 FANS STAND HIGH AND DRY OVER TICKET COMPANY FAILURE’, ‘SPA TICKET CONFUSION FOR THOUSANDS OF F1 FANS’. This is what can happen when innocent Formula 1 fans fall victim to fake ticketing shops offering Formula 1 tickets that never happen.
During the Formula 1 race year, a number of ticketing scams often crop up like online ticketing shops. The most common ways F1 fans are scammed through these ticket offices is by pre-paying for tickets that never arrive. This is after paying a hefty amount for the ticket, which includes paying additional service charges and shipping fees.
Fake Formula 1 ticket scams can take many forms. Many of these scams look like legitimate companies that offer Formula 1 tickets, but after fans make the purchase, they never receive their tickets and later learn that the company was a scam. This is exactly what happened in June 2012, when many F1 fans were left without tickets after buying them from a box office known as ‘Simply The Ticket’ for the British GP at Silverstone. Many F1 fans who intended to travel to Valencia for the European GP were scammed when tickets did not arrive despite having paid for them. For example, Hayley Pearson, who lives in Great Moulton, South Norfolk, had a few days off and was planning to go to the European Grand Prix. She decided to buy her tickets at ‘Simply the Ticket’. She booked tickets on the site and then never received them. Another example was Ben Miller, who arranged to take his girlfriend to Valencia for the F1 race but did not receive his tickets from the company either. Ben tried to contact ‘Simply The Ticket’ but Simplytheticket.com could not be reached and there was news that the website had been taken down and the company had gone bankrupt. What happened to Mrs. Pearson and Mr. Miller can happen to you too.
In another similar incident in August 2012, the Dutch media reported that around 6,000 F1 fans who bought tickets for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps were unable to attend the event because their tickets did not arrive despite paying for them. If this was not enough, at the Indian GP event, several F1 fans were cheated by online ticket sellers. The modus operandi of these fake F1 ticket sellers was simple. They declared themselves as an authorized ticketing partner and sent SMS messages saying “You have won a free Forumla-1 ticket in the Indian Grand Prix mobile draw promotion.” This even prompted the organizers of the Indian GP to warn F1 fans to be aware of scammers selling F1 tickets at a lower price. These scams could have been easily avoided if fans had known all the official ticketing partners or carefully checked the details behind the ticket sellers. Unfortunately, not many F1 enthusiasts have the ability to run background checks at ticket shops and therefore may be left outside the gates on race day, either without tickets or with fake tickets. It’s not a good situation.
If this can happen to 6,000+ people, it can happen to you. Regardless of the stories, fake F1 ticket shops seem to involve websites asking you to pay money and then not giving you your tickets back. The sad truth is that there is often little or no recourse to getting your money back if the tickets don’t arrive or aren’t legitimate. For the full report detailing the most common F1 ticket buying mistakes and how to avoid them, go here: http://bit.ly/1oXP1Fh