By Jeffrey Buck

Although I missed the show, there was a lot of buzz going around after Kid Rock’s big 40^th birthday bash at Ford Field, most of which were raving reviews of his set and special guests. However, the reports of counterfeit tickets that were sold off of craigslist hardly went unnoticed.

I probably wouldn’t have had such a keen interest in this mater if I didn’t know someone who was directly affected by this unfortunate situation. A friend of mine bought a ticket from a guy off of craigslist only to find out while trying to enter Ford Field that it was in fact a counterfeit.

Craigslist is a helpful source of a lot of things but it is also a big gamble. Ticketmaster, livenation (They issued a statement) and Stubhub like to charge their customers large fees, but as a result, most transactions are secure. I’m not here to tell you what’s wrong or what’s right but I thought I’d take the chance and tell people what to look for when buying tickets from a non-secure outlet.

Here are a few things I’ve learned:

1. Make sure to take a look at the font. Ticketmaster uses the same font, so bring a past ticket for a comparison, as it’s better to be safe than sorry. Look for unusual commas or spaces in the web address, too.

2. Color is key. If the person used a scanner and printer the color from the ticket is going to usually be faded or a different shade. The letters within the colors may no longer be as readable, either.

3. Make sure the ticket has perforated dots, in other words can you easily bend or tear off the ends of the ticket.

4. Stick with hard tickets not the printable ones you can receive through email. These can be printed numerous times and the first one to enter wins.

5. If possible try and meet the seller at the venue day of or buy them from someone that is selling them out front. Have a few buddies hang out with him until you make it past the turnstiles.

Here are a few examples from someone else that was scammed (In this case, for an AC/DC Concert):

(The two tickets on top are counterfeits. Notice the color and quality difference between the two lower ticket backs.)

Hopefully this will help you next time you buy tickets away from Ticketmaster and the like.  I hate when people get screwed by selfish sellers. Kid Rock was upset over how many people were complaining about not getting tickets when they went on sale because of the market value for brokers, which is another problem. Both need to be fixed somehow.

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