When Ticket Scams Hit Home at the Avalon

The complaints used to trickle in. Lately, they come in waves.

People show up at the Avalon thrilled for a show—Graham Nash, Judy Collins, the Eastport Oyster Boys—and the night starts with a thud. The seats aren’t what they thought. The name on the ticket isn’t theirs. The price they paid doesn’t match the face value printed right there in black and white.

“We’re seeing it with almost every show,” said Jessica Bellis, the Avalon Foundation’s Director of Finance and Operations. “Not just the big names you’d expect to draw competition from resellers. Community shows, too. Last year’s Sound of Music—people were spending three or four times face value because they landed on a reseller’s site.”

If you’re thinking “scalpers,” that’s not it. This is something else—slick third-party “marketplaces” that look like a venue’s box office, speak with the same urgency (“only two left!”), and promise tickets… later. Sometimes they buy after you buy, then transfer the tickets just before showtime. Sometimes they buy early, mark up the price, and pass along a QR code with a stranger’s name on it. Always, they add fees—double, triple, more.

“I think people have been desensitized to ticket pricing,” Bellis said. “There’s been so much news about how expensive tours are. So you see $60 for a regional act and think, ‘I guess that’s what it costs now.’ It doesn’t—if you’re on our site. But if you’re on a resale site, it suddenly does.”

That desensitization has a cost beyond dollars. “It colors the whole experience,” Bellis said. “You came here to relax, to have fun, and now you’re stewing because the ticket says $60 and you paid $150.”

Deana Villani, the Avalon’s Multimedia Specialist, sees how easy it is to get fooled. “People Google ‘Avalon Theater,’ click the top result—which is usually an ad—and land on a site that looks legitimate,” she said. “The seat maps mimic ours: right orchestra, center orchestra, left orchestra. But there are tells. We list rows by letters, A through H. They might show ‘Row 25.’ We don’t have a Row 25.”

Another tell: pop-ups and flashing countdowns. “Low ticket warning. Selling fast. Only two remaining. That’s not us,” Villani said. “We may note low inventory in an email, but we’re not doing the slot-machine thing on the site.”

What happens when someone realizes too late?

“We try to care for them,” Bellis said. “If there’s a better seat open, we’ll move them. But we can’t refund money we never received. We don’t know what they paid or who took their payment. If they’ve misplaced the confirmation and don’t remember which site they used, we’re doing detective work in the lobby while doors are closing.”

She told a story from a near-sold-out Judy Collins show: an older woman came alone, flustered, without a receipt. “We pieced it together—one single seat in a row she sort of remembered—but you feel awful,” Bellis said. “And then someone asks, ‘Why doesn’t your website warn people?’ It does. But they weren’t on our website.”

Villani sees patterns. “Folks from out of town are the most vulnerable,” she said. “They don’t know what our site looks like, they’re not on our email list, and they’re used to searching by the artist’s name plus city. They click the first thing that looks right. We’ve had people drive up from Norfolk and elsewhere in Virginia, and it’s heartbreaking to tell them they paid triple.”

The confusion doesn’t end at purchase. If a show is canceled, shifted, or has important day-of updates, the venue emails the account holder—the real buyer of record. “If that’s a reseller, the message may never get to the person in the seat,” Bellis said. “We often station someone at the door during cancellations because we know some patrons won’t have been told. Nine times out of ten, those are reseller tickets.”

Why not fight back on Google? Short answer: money.

“Yes, you can play the SEO/ads game to float your official link to the top,” Bellis said. “But it’s expensive and targeted by geography and demographics. A nonprofit venue like ours can’t outspend national marketplaces. It would be throwing good money after bad. Our strategy is education: talk with the press, speak to community groups, and warn patrons everywhere we can.”

There’s also the industry reality: most Avalon shows aren’t meant to sell out. “We design our schedule to serve the community,” Bellis said. “The idea that you need a ‘concierge’ service to secure seats here is mostly fiction. You usually can buy legitimate tickets at face value from us.”

So what should people do?

First, start in the right place. “Type the venue address directly,” Villani said. “For us, it’s avalonfoundation.org. Alternatively, visit the artist’s official website and click the venue link on their tour page. If you’re on our email list, those links go straight to our ticketing system.”

Second, sanity-check the price. “If your gut says, ‘This seems high for this act or this hall,’ get out of the cart and check our homepage,” Bellis said. “If our listed price doesn’t match what you’re about to pay, you’re on the wrong site.”

Third, check the details. “Rows listed as numbers instead of letters? A countdown clock and pop-ups? A ‘Row 25’ in a hall that doesn’t have numbers?” Villani said. “Those are red flags.”

Finally, slow down. “Don’t buy tickets after two glasses of wine on your phone,” Bellis said. “That’s when people make the biggest mistakes.”

There’s a part of this story that often gets overlooked: the people we never see—the ones who get priced out before they can click buy. “We talk about patrons who show up with marked-up tickets,” Bellis said. “But what about the people who land on a reseller, see the wrong price, and decide they can’t afford the Eastport Oyster Boys at sixty bucks when our tickets are twenty-five or thirty? They miss out entirely.”

On the flip side, some patrons overpay and never realize it. “They come, enjoy the show, and leave blissfully unaware,” Bellis said. “They’ll do it again next time. As a nonprofit, that stings. If you’re willing to pay triple face value, I’d love to introduce you to our development director and put those extra dollars to work here instead of with a reseller.”

If this sounds widespread, it is. “It’s not just us,” Villani said. “Birchmere, arena venues, major arts centers—it’s everywhere.” Bellis has started bringing the issue to civic groups. “I did a live demo with the St. Michaels Women’s Club,” she said. “We typed in searches together, clicked the top results, and saw how legitimate those bogus sites look. It was eye-opening.”

And as for legal remedies, the venue’s hands are tied at the door. “Resale is legal,” Bellis said. “These companies say they’re providing a ‘service.’ They’re not offering great customer service, but they’re operating within the rules. We can’t void those tickets on sight. Our focus is on helping people avoid the trap in the first place.”

The simplest path remains the best one: go straight to the source. “Our email list is a safety net,” Bellis said. “Every buy link is ours. The artist’s tour page is another safe on-ramp. What’s risky is typing the artist and city into a search engine and trusting the first result. We could be 15 or 20 links down.”

It would be easy to shrug and say this is the new normal. Bellis isn’t there. “We should be talking with peer venues and ticketing partners more,” she said. “Trade groups are buzzing about it. For now, the most effective thing is getting the word out.”

The message isn’t scoldy. It’s practical. “Buyer beware is the headline,” Bellis said. “Trust your gut. If anything feels off, hit pause and check us directly. Call us if you need to—we’ll call you back.”

One more thing—let’s talk out loud about it. 

“Please don’t be embarrassed if you’ve been scammed like this,” Bellis said. “That silence is how your friend ends up making the same mistake. Use the comments. Share the story. Help us spread the word.”

Villani agreed and put it plainly. “I’d love it if people took care to go to the actual venue or artist’s website and purchase tickets from there,” she said. “It would put these resellers out of business.”

Have you hit a reseller wall—overpaid seats, last-minute ticket transfers, no notification on a cancellation? Share your story below. Your experience might be the nudge that saves a neighbor from the same headache—and gets more people into the seats they meant to buy at the price the venue actually set.