Action News Troubleshooting: Help with disappearing concert tickets

Action News Troubleshooters have heard from some distressed consumers who say the tickets in their Ticketmaster accounts were stolen.

About half a dozen consumers say their tickets were transferred illegally. And at least one person says they tried to stop the transmission during processing but couldn't.

Luckily, the troubleshooters were able to help.

“I’m very excited,” said Jennifer Powell of Clementon, Camden County.

Powell is a self-confessed goofball — which means she's a big fan of New Kids on the Block. That's why she bought eight tickets for her concert in Las Vegas at the end of September.

But days later, she received an email saying her tickets had been transferred.

“My heart sank. I spoke to my cousin on the phone and said, 'I have to go. My tickets are gone!'” she said.

The same thing happened with the Chase Atlantic tickets that Candy Aboelnour of Columbus, Burlington County, bought for her daughter.

“So she was really upset. She came up to me and said, 'I don't know what's going on.' She explained it to me. I tried calling Ticketmaster,” she said.

Powell was able to recover her tickets herself, but Aboelnour says she wasn't so lucky.

“I reached out to you because I felt kind of helpless,” she said.

The problem solvers contacted Ticketmaster and got Aboelnour's tickets back.

“Thank you. I am very happy. My daughter will be very happy. Your girlfriend will be happy. Thank you,” she said.

According to Ticketmaster, due to the security measures built into its mobile tickets, almost all tickets were recovered.

“Fans can best protect themselves by setting a strong, unique password for all accounts, particularly their personal email addresses, which we often see create security issues,” the company said.

This serves as a good reminder to use different passwords for each account.

“If you use the same password for multiple accounts, one of those accounts will be hacked and those passwords will appear on the dark web,” said David Henry of Netgear.

You can use a strong password that your device creates for you or create your own complex passphrase keeping the following question in mind.

“Is it easy for you to remember and difficult for others to guess?”

These consumers say they are taking this advice to heart.

We know that Ticketmaster experienced a data security incident last year, but whether this increase in incidents is related is unclear.

Now Ticketmaster has added two-factor authentication to customer accounts, but many other accounts require you to enable double authentication and it is important that you do so.

Ticketmaster ticket tips