Homegrown festival told of two alleged ticket scamming incidents

ONE News reporter Renee Graham had a special tour of the annual Homegrown music festival.

Homegrown spokesperson Kelly Wright says the concert has been made aware of two ticket scamming incidents ahead of the March 23 festival on the Wellington waterfront.

“This is much less than last year. People are definitely getting wiser than getting them through Facebook. Trade Me at least can help you recoup fees,” Ms Wright told 1 NEWS.

Last year, Ms Wright said, Homegrown was contacted by 45 people who claimed they’d been scam victims, but expected the number to be a lot higher.

She said the latest scam complainants this year had shown Homegrown screenshots of “friendly messaging with lots of communication” and said that once money had been deposited into the scammers bank accounts, the Facebook accounts they’d been messaging would disappear before any ticket was shared.

“All we can do is get in touch with police and try to go down that avenue. There were a handful of prosecutions last year.”

The Kiwi music festival sold out in less than seven weeks, practically the same time period as last year, however capacity for the event has increased by 2000 people this year, to 20,000.

The only tickets still available for the event are for the pre-party.

Ms Wright said Homegrown had partnered with independent reseller Tixel this year in an attempt to address the issue.

The website states tickets listed have already been verified, with Ms Wright adding that prices can only increase on Tixel by $10 to $20 and sellers are only paid after the event. 

Police have also promoted the website as the only official reseller for the event.

Currently, no tickets for Homegrown are available on Tixel though.

Eight people are listed as recently having sold Homegrown tickets on the site.

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