SEVERAL HOZIER FANS have been left deeply disappointed after a fake ticket scam left them unable to attend his gig in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre last night.

Dearbhla Lovett from Cavan was one of the fans affected – she told DailyEdge.ie that she bought her tickets from a seller on DoneDeal.

The woman, also from Cavan, was offering four tickets for €50 each – more than double the face value of the tickets, which originally sold at €20.

Hozier performing at the Olympia Theatre last night Facebook Facebook

I texted her about the tickets and asked to meet up in the town square. My dad came with me just in case it was dodgy, but she did seem genuine. I got her down to €150 for four tickets.

Lovett said she received four printed e-tickets and they appeared to be the real deal –  she noticed something strange about the font, but put it down to printer problems.

“They looked genuine but the print on them was weird, like they’d been printed out funny,” she said.

On the day we queued an hour and half early, because we had standing tickets. Then one of my friends’ tickets wouldn’t scan through, and a few security guards came over and told us they were fake.

“Disappointed doesn’t even begin to cover it,” she said.

A couple in the queue behind Lovett and her group had the same problem with their tickets, which were bought from a different person but bore the name and number of the woman Lovett purchased her tickets from.

Other gig-goers expressed their disappointment at the scam on Twitter:

Lovett attempted to contact the woman about the fake tickets, but got no answer.

A spokesperson for Ticketmaster told DailyEdge.ie that the company is “always sorry” to hear about fans being disappointed, but the only advice it could give was to buy from official Ticketmaster outlets.

If you buy from websites or from someone in a pub, you have no way of knowing it is genuine. There will always be shows where because of high demand people are tempted to buy tickets wherever they can get them but they should be aware of the consequences if the tickets turn out to be fake.

DoneDeal echoed these statements, saying it was doing all it could to monitor, remove and block potentially fraudulent advertisers. The company has some advice to help users avoid buying fake tickets:

• Exercise extra caution when purchasing e-tickets, which can be reprinted numerous times.
• Check with Ticketmaster or the official distributor of the tickets to verify their authenticity.
• Compare font size and logos with genuine tickets, look for misspellings, and test the quality of the ink by scraping it with a fingernail.

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