A £100 lesson in festival ticket scams

A 20-year-old woman lost £100 to someone claiming to sell Download 2026 festival tickets, raising the question: is this a scam or just bad luck with a stranger?

She found the seller through Facebook comments on ticket posts. The woman seemed legitimate, offering a spare ticket and proposing a payment plan that appeared protective—£100 upfront, ticket delivery, then the remaining balance. It sounded reasonable. She sent the money via Revolut and waited.

The seller never delivered the ticket. She also refused to return the £100, claiming she'd already paid a Ticketmaster name change fee. When the buyer checked, that fee doesn't exist.

This is a textbook advance-fee scam. The seller extracted money upfront by creating false urgency and fake legitimacy. The nonexistent Ticketmaster fee was her exit strategy—a convenient, unprovable reason to keep the cash while claiming she'd already spent it. The refusal to return money compounds the fraud.

What makes these scams effective is how they exploit time pressure and social dynamics. The buyer was rushing to work. The seller was "really lovely." These human elements lower defenses. By the time doubt creeps in, the money is gone and the seller has vanished or doubled down with excuses.

Revolut's follow-up is the right move. Banks can sometimes recover funds from scam transfers, though success rates vary. The key is reporting it quickly, which she did.

Some hard truths: legitimate ticket sellers don't demand upfront payments through peer-to-peer apps. They don't cite fees that don't exist. They don't refuse refunds when they haven't delivered goods. And they certainly don't go silent after taking money.

She wasn't stupid. She actually tried to build safeguards into the transaction by proposing stages. The problem was the safeguard itself was flawed—once that first £100 left her account, the seller had no incentive to follow through.

This wasn't bad luck with a random lady. This was a deliberate con. The apology shouldn't come from her.