Scammers affecting legit Eminem ticket sellers

Scammers may have affected some Kiwi Eminem ticket sales. Photo / AP

Scammers are causing troubles for people trying to sell legitimate concert tickets to Eminem.

The American rap star's playing to a crowd of more than 40,000 at Westpac Stadium in Wellington this Saturday night.

More than half of the attendees are coming from out of town in what's expected to be one of the biggest concerts the stadium's held.

Facebook groups are being inundated with people trying to resell tickets to the concert, among them is Auckland woman Beth - who has been trying to sell tickets she bought to the gig for about three months and has had no luck.

Beth brought the tickets for family members and wants her money back totalling more than $1000. She's selling her tickets for face value.

She said she first started on Ticketmaster Resale but there was no interest so decided to put them on a Facebook group.

"I got a lot of people wanting to know about them but quite a few people pulled out because they thought I was a scammer."

Beth said she tried to be as honest as she could by giving people more options, like offering for people to purchase the tickets off reselling websites, off her directly or from her cousin who lived in Wellington.

"I just got messed around a lot and it was quite disappointing because I'm an honest person and I just want to get my money back,

"A lot of people are unfortunately getting scammed now and it makes it really difficult for those people that are honest and are legit sellers."

She believed the reason why people tried to purchase them and sell them off Facebook was because re-selling websites charged a fee. She thinks if the sites had a cheaper fee, people would be more likely to sell and buy from them.

She said the process has been "frustrating" and "emotional".

"I've obviously spent over $1000 dollars and I wanted to get my money back but it has proved to be harder than I have ever imagined."

Martin Cocker, Netsafe CEO, said people could list their tickets to sell anywhere but they would find people are now sceptical to anybody selling a ticket where there are not lots of controls.

He said ticket-based scams had been on the rise for years and are continuing to grow.

"There's no question that cyber crime undermines people's confidence in legitimate systems but there are typically appropriate ways to trade online that are safe and people simply need to seek them out."

Cocker said if people were going to buy from an unregulated marketplace they would have to take the risk that comes with it.

"There may be things to do to check legitimacy of a ticket but as a general rule if you don't buy through a legitimate e-commerce site... you are going to have to bear the risk."