Ugh. I have a huge pit in my stomach. Inspired by hopes of quick points and miles, I went all-in on tickets for the upcoming Travis Scott tour. Like, alllll in.
I bought blocks of them, thinking I’d resell at face value right away. Well, they’re not moving and I can’t tell whether I’m in over my head, not the right type for this, or profoundly irresponsible (especially in light of my ongoing FIRE journey). Or just way too impatient.
Come on Travis, do your thing
I bought the tickets last week and the tour begins next month (October 11 in Charlotte). My first show tickets are for October 20 in Kansas City.
Since I bought them, all I’ve been doing in my spare time is refreshing the seat maps. I’m already thinking: Do I have to take a loss? Why did I do this? How else can I offload these things?
There are all sorts of ways to earn extra miles and points. For this one, I jumped in feet first wayyy too soon.
Travis Scott ticket reselling
I have all these theories about how this tour and ticket reselling opportunity appealed to me psychologically.
I’m recovering from trauma, and that can manifest in all sorts of ways, including extremely irresponsible behavior.
And yet—I really thought this would be a quick way to buy tickets, let the tour sell out, and earn easy points.
It hasn’t even been a week and I am not keeping my cool at all. In fact, I’m going rather mad about the whole thing. What a fine mess I’ve made—and alllll that means about where I am in life.
If you’ve ever wanted a schadenfreude experience from me, this might be the one.
Thanks.
I can’t tell if I’m having shame or guilt about this. Or if I’m just spinning my wheels having all these Big Feelings™️ and should take a chill pill and relax. I guess I’m not the “relaxing” type.
How I thought it would go
There’s also some expectation vs reality going on. I thought:
- The tour would sell out in a day
- I’d list the tickets for sale
- And resell them the next day
- Viola!
Instead:
- The tickets are sitting there
- I’ve priced them as low as I can to recoup what I spent (face value and nothing more)
- Am already thinking about taking losses, why did I do this, etc.
- I will absolutely never do this again
The other surprising thing to me is how hard I went with this. For maybe the first time in my life, not even kidding, I felt possessed and out-of-control as I was doing this. I just kept buying them. Like, yup, OK, buy buy buy.
I was thinking about earning points and making a few quick bucks.
How it’s actually going
I am like, tortured over all of this. Like how was I planning to float the cost when I have so little experience in this arena (pun intended)?
Plus, tbh, I really don’t know anything about Travis Scott except that I wanted his tour to be a juggernaut a la Taylor Swift or Beyonce earlier this year.
I’m refreshing my listings, hoping to get an email that someone bought them and that I can pay it all back and move on.
Also experiencing a lot of “omg why did I do this?” which doesn’t feel helpful or productive in case that isn’t already clear. 😣
Takeaways so far
Let’s say the tour sells out and I resell the tickets and make it all back and life goes on. That would be my best-case scenario.
Even with that, waiting for these tickets to sell is actually painful. It has an element of gambling and “wait and see” that I don’t find exciting. I have quickly discovered this avenue is not for me.
The worst-case scenario is that the tickets don’t sell, or I sell with a huge loss. In that case, I’d be kicking myself over this for a long time.
Either way, I am learning a huge lesson and won’t soon touch this method again soon, if ever.
My plan
I have the tickets listed on Ticketmaster, Stub Hub, and Cash or Trade. Even if I could wait and realize profits later, I’d rather sell at face value and move on. The waiting is terrible for me.
I’m trying to be as calm as possible, and also fast discovering that’s not easy for me to do.
For now, I’m going to sit and wait. Then, a week or two before the shows, I’ll see where prices are and drop them as low as I have to go just to make anything back.
Typed out like that, it sounds like a terrible plan. Ugh. What tf was I thinking?
Ticket reselling bottom line
This ticket reselling has been the ultimate “hot oven” moment for me. I have touched it and quickly learned.
I’m also thinking I’m a scalper, I deserve this, it’s people like me that ruin the system, what did I actually expect with next to no experience?
Allll that. I have genuinely resold tickets before when plans had to change, but in those times I was prepared to lose cash and pleased when they sold. The wait was nothing. This time, the stakes feel so much higher. I found out what my limit was—real fast.
Also, I will absolutely never touch this particular oven ever again.
Have you ever had an experience like this? Like you thought you could handle something (for the points or whatever), but then it just felt so totally not good? Uggggh. I feel like I really effed up this time.
Soooo… if anyone out there wants a block of Travis Scott tickets, get at me. All I want is face value and to never be in this situation again.
It has kicked up some really profound feelings of distress that signal I still have a lot of healing to do, and also that the process is starting. For that, I’m grateful. Now, get these tickets outta here!
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Didn’t pfs buyers club offer to purchase these at cost + $25 per ?
I was too late for the deal. I wonder if they’d take mercy on my little soul?
They did the day prior to them going on sale, but it was under certain circumstances… like up to 8 per show only and had to have a certain number of seats together, and only up to a certain price point.
I did the PFS deal and I might be screwed as well. They’ve gone from saying we just need to transfer the ticket to them to now having to wait for them to sell using some re-selling software they forced all of us to install on our ticketmaster account. I’m hoping I get my money back at this point.
I think you’re confused. PFS never asked anyone to install re-selling software on their Ticketmaster accounts. They are handling all ticket transfers themselves without the buyers having to do anything.
Okay, I see what you’re saying. PFS installed the re-selling software on our accounts. I thought you were saying they made us install it ourselves.
I also bought some Travis ticket based on the PFS offer but so far they have not sold any and I am getting nervous I will be stuck with them. Has anybody gotten their money back from PFS?
Nope – they can’t sell theirs either
PFS is offering full cost back to some of their customers but not others. Scammers.
I did the PFS deal as well and got screwed. I followed their directions and purchased 2 tickets for $503. They’ve now realized what a shitty deal it was as well and are only willing to give me $390.
I also purchased 4 tickets for his Las Vegas show not realizing it wasn’t part of his regular concert tour. These tickets can’t be resold or transferred so I’m out $608 on these. At this point I’m hoping and praying he has to cancel the show that night!
General tip: ticket scalping only works for events where your audience is older white people with money, or are kids of older white people with money. Think Adele, Taylor, Garth Brooks, etc.
Good for future reference. I’m done with this, though. #neveragain
Be very careful with Garth Brooks, mostly avoid. Often, for his tix, each location charges the same amount for seating so unless you get Floor tix for the same price as the nosebleeds…you will lose. He’s anti-reselling and Tmster’s dynamic pricing.
Wow! Shame on you and this very stereotypical response. Shame also on you Harlan for acknowledging this ridiculous recommendation.
Beyonce is a Black woman and her audience has been mostly Black. Her resales have been much more expensive and than Taylor swift, go figure! Taylor sold $80 no view, audio only tickets, while Beyonce’s were $300. Still think only older white people pay $$ for tickets??? Loser
Harlan karma knocked and you answered. You had no business buying the tickets or allowing your greed to cause you headache. I hope the tickets dont sell so you are forced to attend the concert
You’ve just proven Karens come in all shapes, sizes and colors.
Obviously you have never sold tickets. It’s the rich white kids who pay the most for Beyonce tickets, and any other urban act. And their parents pay up for Adele, U2, Stones, etc. Only color we care about is green, and it’s the rich white kids and their parents who spend the most.
Don’t worry Harlan, it’s not just you. Back when Hamilton was selling like crazy I bought 8 tickets at Face Value for 2 separate shows for $400 and was overjoyed when I resold a day later for $800 each. I was looking forward to my $4k profit.
Fast-forward to the date of the show and it turns out I listed them for the matinee show rather than the evening show, and I had to pay Stubhub the price for walk-up tickets, which was even more than the profit I had made. Luckily I broke even with the second show, and yeah, this was my own foolishness or lack of detail when I listed them, but I decided to never do any more ticket re-selling after that.
I guess it’s just another painful life lesson learned.
That’s the way I’m looking at it (so far): another life lesson. I thought I had the tolerance for it, but I just really, really don’t. I just want to get rid of them ASAP and not do this again. Ugh. Maybe I’ll be able to break even. Thanks for sharing, Joe.
Travis Scott is cancelled after the astroworld event. No one will spend big bucks to be trampled, they’ll only go if tickets are cheap, and they know from astroworld that you can just bum rush in the event without a ticket
Yeah, I guess so. :/ Some of the shows are selling well, but some just… aren’t. But then again, I don’t know the Gen Z ticket-buying habits. Totally kicking myself about this one.
Have you tried calling a ticket broker? I’ve had luck unloading extra tickets in Chicago for face or more to some of the brokers. Of course they were big shows at Wrigley Field. I wouldn’t overplay your hand and say how many you need to dump. But the brokers have way more exposure and access to clients than a normal person does.
Hmmmm, I’ll search for one and see what comes up! Thank you for the recommendation!
Sorry to hear about this. For newbies, start with events that you know will definitely sell out. I agree with the previous poster that certain demographics are used to buying ticket resale. Take this as a learning lesson but don’t give up.
I’ve been flipping tickets for 20+ years. I highly recommend just listing the tickets for the lowest current amount in your section (rip the band-aid off). Feel free to reach out, I can give you more advice.
Thank you – emailed with a question!
This may be riskier than you’d like, but my friend back in grad school did this well. Go and sell tickets for high demand events right before tickets are released. You don’t have to deliver until 3 days before the event in which case you can likely cover your purchase with lower priced tickets, just deliver tickets that are equal or better than you had promised to deliver.
I dunno, scalping just leaves you feeling a little unclean. I don’t wish you ill but I’m glad this is a one and done experience.
Yeah for sure. I don’t even want to scalp, getting face value (plus the points for me) would be plenty. After this, I have no wish to be involved in it. I learned my risk tolerance is pretttyyyy low.
Be careful listing them on multiple sites. If they sell on two sites at once, you’ll owe walk-up price to cover the second set sold. If you drop price to sell, that can happen, and you’ll be out even more.
For sure. I’m tracking that carefully. Many threads on Reddit cautioned this as well. That would REALLY suck.
Definitely learned this lesson the hard way when I went all in on Taylor Swift tix and then she added another night which made my tickets worthless.
Yeah that (partially) happened here too. There was a big tour announcement and then that night, 11 more dates were miraculously added. Which waters down everything even more.
if you were too dumb to still make money on ALL Taylor tickets no matter how many shows were added (there could’ve been ten more in EVERY state) then you sure are clueless!
How much of a loss are we even talking? A couple thousand max if you sell at a loss? Lesson learned, take the L and move on. Not even worth thinking or writing about.
I’ve been doing this for years… To quote Bull Durham: Some days you win… Some days you lose… Some days it rains. I’ve certainly made good $ on events and lost money on bad ones. One of the factors that affects market price is supply. So if someone like PFS put out an open order for 8 tickets per show at up to $250, and all those guys bought the worst of the seats that met the criteria (it was easy to buy since the initial face values were so high) there will be a glut of seats on the market. Point hounds could have bought at 8x$250 that’s $2000 per person per show and say someone grabs 4 or 5 shows, 200 people doing that and it’s possible that this coin guy could have $2M in tickets. Most of those tickets are worth about 50 cents on the dollar now… some even less (granted, some more)… So this could be a serious underwater scenario. Be thankful you’re just you and not the guy backing the open order.
But if it makes you feel better, maybe someone who couldn’t afford the $250 for a ticket will get it for 30 to 50 cents on the dollar, have and have a great time at something they couldn’t otherwise afford. So… in this case fans benefit from the secondary market. The buyers… eh…. not so much… But if you want to play the game and get the big wins, there are often big losses.
The best thing that could happen for you is for Travis Scott to cancel due to “logistical issues”… Effectively a “rain out” and everything gets unwound. So, some days you win, some days you lose… and hopefully for you it might rain.
your goal on this was to break even? dude. quit
Planning on it! (Quitting, that is.)
PFS just offered everyone on this an option to cash out and give up the $25 per ticket commission and be paid by this weekend, and a second option to wait for the tickets to actually be sold and be paid with the commission.
Notably, they didn’t say what would happen if the tickets never sell
I mean… see my above post. There is no way of knowing, but it is conceivable they could have over $1M maybe event $2M in tix and the market B2B is (depending on seat quality, but assume people bought the worst of the price category) like 50 cents on the dollar. Could it tick up? Sure. But if someone is offering you an out at cost… I’d RUN to take that deal.
PFS Buyers Club is offering a 50/50 split on losses on Travis Scott tickets and are scamming the buyers. I got their shadily worded email from them today. Weird that I didn’t see any profit splits from them in other deals.
!!! DO NOT DO ANY DEAL WITH PFS BUYERS CLUB !!!
I got the same email. I can’t believe this is the way they are treating their customers. The absence of information about the ticket type and potential risks was a significant factor that contributed to the current predicament. We put trust in them, but they as a business just wants to split loss which is mainly due to their fault. What a scammer!!
I will never do any business with them!
On the bright side, they’ll take that Olivia Rodrigo code that might be worth $500+ and give you $40… IF they use it.
They offered $100 for the code. I ended up not giving it to them and bought a couple of tix for resell.
Not sure what you’re talking about, PFS offered to fully pay people’s cost if they gave up their commission. And at least for me, they followed through, I have my money back.
Same here. Not sure what the other posters are talking about.
It’s about the reseller tickets that we bought before the second email specifying the ticket type.
I got ripped off by Pfs Buyers with this deal… they did not specify the ticket type to buy until after I’d already bought 8 tickets. Then they tell us to click a box and filter the tickets, and that they won’t even reimburse costs. Not to mentionthe other 34 non resale tickets I bought that they won’t pay commissions on. I’m going to lose over $500 on this deal where I should have made over $2000 if they honored their word. I’m considering filing a lawsuit against them for breach of contract.
You signed a contract with them prior to buying the tickets? Hmmm.
I got ripped off by Pfs Buyers with this deal… they did not specify the ticket type to buy until after I’d already bought 8 tickets. Then they tell us to click a box and filter the tickets, and that they won’t even reimburse costs. Not to mentionthe other 34 non resale tickets I bought that they won’t pay commissions on. I’m going to lose over $500 on this deal where I should have made over $2000 if they honored their word. I’m considering filing a lawsuit against them for breach of contract.
This whole thing is a mess for PFS and many of their members(or former members now). Luckily I had enough experience in ticket buying/reselling to know not to buy reseller tickets in this deal. I bought 14 standard tickets and was completely reimbursed. However, PFS should have made clearer instructions on how to buy tickets. In addition, they were telling people that if they bought 32 tickets they would earn $800 in commission. I thought that was very irresponsible as they were not only not setting any ticket limits but encouraging people to go all in.
There should have been red flags with the 8 ticket limit, which is quite high, and no pre-sale or access codes. Look at recent ticket sales with U2 in Las Vegas, Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Olivia Rodrigo. All of these required some kind of VerifiedFan type of access code. There was nothing with Travis Scott.
For years PFS did nothing but coin sales, but those had been very few and far between the last couple of years. It appears they decided to try their hand with ticket reselling without having enough info. on how it works.
Lokololololol. Suck it, scalpers.
PFS STOLE TICKETS FROM ME!!
I know some of you are “satisfied” (or at least relieved) with the outcome of this fiasco in that you got your money back, but do not be fooled. PFS is not an honest player!!
I, like many of you, have completed numerous deals over the years for coin purchases without incident.
For the PFS Travis Scott deal, I followed the instructions to the letter and purchased 8 tickets for the Boston 12/23 show. I forwarded the email, filled out the Google form (Although I was HORRIFIED that I was now being asked to turn over my Ticketmaster login info, as many of you were).
I also purchased 2 tickets to Austin show and 2 tickets to the Denver show. I did not intend these for PFS and I did not include these tickets on the form that I filled out. Anyone who was in on this deal will recall the vibe from PFS at the time *we are overwhelmed and will get more communication out later*.
A week later, I received the following in an email from PFS:
“It looks like we already sold 2 of the tickets that we were not committed to purchasing, this is a problem and we cannot have that occur to the other two.”
This is a problem of their own making. “we already sold 2 of the tickets that we were not committed to purchasing” – just a jaw-dropping admission here.
And a 2nd email that same day:
“ Regarding the two that sold, we’re sorry that our software picked it up.. Either we’ll deduct the $349.24 loss from your payout, or we can transfer replacement tickets that are the same tier or better”
PFS took (without my permission) 2 tickets from my TM account, sold them at a loss and want me to be responsible for that loss. PFS keeps trying to frame this as my mistake and therefore my responsibility.
In the meantime, I did opt for the “break-even” on the 8 tickets I purchased for the PFS deal as any trust I had in them is gone.
One month later and NUMEROUS requests from me to reimburse for or replace the 2 tickets they took from my account without my permission, nothing has happened but delay tactics. PFS has “offered” worse (not better) tickets as a replacement. The tickets I purchased were front and center in row M. PFS has offered tickets behind the stage; tickets on the corner in Row V. Their most recent “offer” for 2 tickets further back in the same section was “purchase the tickets on the reseller market and we will reimburse you.” Yea, right – fool me once, etc.
I, among many, have learned my lesson on ever dealing with this outfit again. If you’re feeling like this was OK in the end and you would deal with PFS again, then I guess you get what you deserve when they steal from you in the future.
Play stupid games, learn stupid lessons. Karma.
I participated in the Travis Scott deal….I’d done coin deals with PFS before. I bought tickets to 4 different shows, a total of $2,900. I was careful to abide by the instructions they laid out and only buy tickets based on their specifications. I felt that they were clear in the parameters in advance, but one had to be careful to not buy tickets outside the price range, or not together, etc.
PFS clearly bit off more than they could chew. Within days I got an email that I could take option A and get paid the face plus $25 per ticket, but at some future date, possibly months in advance. And possibly never, which they didn’t say, but is the reality.
Option B was cash out now and breakeven. I promptly took option B, got an e-check, and deposited it. If PFS is financed by credit (i.e. they’re borrowing money from a bank or institution) and they start taking massive losses, eventually they run out of cash to pay out people. So if you’re waiting to see if you can eke out the $25 per ticket commission, take option A now. Otherwise you are likely to be left holding the bag.
There have been buyers groups before that do these sorts of things. Listen to the recent frequent miler podcast on buyer groups-they start talking about this deal later in the podcast, I think 45 mins in or so.
The participants may get credit card miles and make some profit in addition. But like many financial lures, it’s often, small profit, small profit, small profit. Then it feels like a sure thing. And people go bigger. And then the thing gets too crowded, and there’s someone on the other side who goes in for the kill. In this case, the other side is Travis Scott and Ticketmaster. Scott associates with the Kardashians, and that whole crowd is absolutely ruthless for a buck. Despite tepid demand, he added more shows after the initial round. There are tickets in some markets going for $7 in the aftermarket.
So eventually these things are apt to blow up. The same thing happens on Wall Street with popular trades: https://towardsdatascience.com/the-xiv-meltdown-1b0608110b9f. Just one example among many, going back to the Dutch Tulip Craze and others.
If option A is still an option for you, I’d suggest taking it.
Sorry, in the above I meant take option B, cash out now