Bogus tickets hit sour note

Pharrell Williams, performing before sold-out crowds last weekend, was joined onstage by Gwen Stefani.

Hundreds of Bruno Mars and Pharrell Williams fans found themselves “Locked Out of Heaven” at the Hollywood Bowl last weekend—and they were none too “Happy” about it.

Bowl officials estimate that several hundred would-be concertgoers were turned away from the sold-out shows when their tickets were rejected as counterfeits.

Faux ticket scams are, unfortunately, an increasingly common part of the live concert landscape. Some U2 fans were shut out of the Irish rockers’ Rose Bowl appearance in 2009. Two years ago, a number of Coldplay fans who had paid from $200 for $400 for their tickets found that they too had been duped with bogus tickets to the band’s shows at the Hollywood Bowl.

The profusion of counterfeit tickets this past weekend was widespread enough that, after the first concert on Saturday night, an anonymous Bowl employee was moved to spread the word on Craigslist in a post headlined: “Beware—I saw a lot of fake Bruno Mars tickets.”

“The event has been sold out for a while and tickets range from 200 for nosebleeds to about 1500 for front row,” the warning said, “so if someone is selling good seats for a small amount of money they are probably fake.”

In other words, watch out for deals that seem too good to be true. But be aware that even shelling out a lot for a ticket is no guarantee it’s genuine.

“It’s heartbreaking to have to turn away patrons who we know paid sometimes as much as four times face value for a fraudulent ticket,” says Gail Samuel, chief operating officer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which runs the county-owned Bowl under a lease agreement. “When we have a sold-out show like Bruno Mars, there is really nothing we can do to help them.”

With a series of major summer concerts ahead at the Bowl and other venues—including Beyoncé and Jay Z at the Rose Bowl and Paul McCartney at Dodger Stadium—the county Department of Consumer Affairs also has some timely advice for fans.

“A lot of these counterfeit tickets out there look very convincing, so don’t think that you can just look at a ticket and tell whether or not it’s fake,” says Dawnnesha Smith, community outreach manager for the department.

She advises consumers to buy directly from the venue’s box office or its primary ticketer (In the case of the Hollywood Bowl, that’s Ticketmaster.)

It’s best to pay with a credit card, she adds, because those purchases often come with added consumer protections. And “if you see any ads suggesting that you wire someone money to purchase a ticket, that is also a red flag. Once you wire money, it is nearly impossible to get it back so you never want to purchase an item using a wire transfer.”

“It all comes down to buying the ticket from a reputable source,” Smith says, “and being extremely leery of buying tickets online and on classified ad websites such as Craigslist.”

Ticketmaster has some tips of its own, including this one for enthusiastic fans tempted to show off their newly-purchased tickets on Facebook, Instagram and other sites:

“We cannot express this point enough, please do NOT take photos of your ticket stubs and post them on social media sites. This is the perfect way for scalpers to rip these tickets right off you.”

Bruno Mars' star-studded shows at the Bowl also attracted ticket scammers. Photo/Florent Déchard

Posted 6/5/14