Concert tickets for Taylor Swift Eras Tour are not easy or cheap. For fans of the superstar who manage to get tickets, the thought of losing them never crosses their minds. But that’s exactly what’s happening to Swifties nationwide, as hackers target Ticketmaster accounts and steal customers’ tickets for resale on other sites.

“It was like that punch,” Morgen Bernius, a mother from Maryland, told CBS News national consumer correspondent Usher Qurashi as she described the moment she discovered that the Taylor Swift tickets she had bought for her daughter had suddenly disappeared. had disappeared from her Ticketmaster account.

“The tickets are gone – gone,” Bernius said, adding that she could cry just thinking about it. “It was devastating,” she added.

Ticketmaster would not say how many people had their tickets stolen, Qurashi reported, but stories of ticket thefts similar to Bernius’s have appeared on social media in the past month. “I woke up and my tickets had been ‘successfully’ transferred,” said another theft victim, using air quotes.

“The No. 1 tip I can give fans to protect themselves is to make sure they have a secure, unique password that they don’t use on other platforms,” said Kaitlyn Henrich, Head of Global at Live Nation Entertainment, parent company of Ticketmaster , Qurashi said.

When asked if the company has let its customers down, Henrich added: “We are constantly striving to look at what’s going on and improve the experience.”

For now, that experience includes an average wait of 48 hours for fans to get their tickets back after notifying the company of their disappearance. As an extra precaution, Ticketmaster is limiting ticket transfers to 72 hours before Eras Tour concerts and requiring two-factor authentication for some transactions.

“It’s a very small percentage, less than a tenth of one percent,” Henrich said, “but for that one fan who experiences that, it’s obviously a very stressful situation.”

Online ticket theft also affects those who unknowingly purchase stolen tickets.

Karen Perry, who paid more than $4,000 for two seats on StubHub to attend the Eras Tour in New Orleans, received an email from TicketMaster several weeks before the show informing her that her tickets had been stolen and would be returned to the original buyer.

“The tickets transferred to you were obtained by someone who tried to steal tickets. As a result, they have been canceled and returned to the original ticket holder,” the letter said.

“My heart sank, my stomach sank,” Perry told Qurashi. “For example, I was at work and immediately started crying.”

StubHub says Ticketmaster never informed them about the customer thefts, which it only found out about through media reports.

“I think if there was a world where we saw, for example, Ticketmaster being more collaborative or more transparent about the problems they have and how they’re trying to solve those problems, we could be a partner in that effort,” he said. Laura Dooley from StubHub to Qurashi.

What you can do to protect yourself

Experts say there are several steps ticket buyers can take to reduce the chance of being scammed.

Check early and often to make sure your tickets are still in your account and haven’t been transferred. Buy from sellers that offer replacement or refund guarantees. Take screenshots of all your purchases.

As for Perry, who unknowingly purchased stolen tickets from StubHub, was able to find new seats with the company’s help and was able to see Swift in action in mid-October.

“We just had the best night of our entire lives,” Perry said. “Without a doubt. It was better than our wedding. It was that good.”

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