GREENSBORO, N.C. — A Greensboro couple said their tickets to Elton John's "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour at the Greensboro Coliseum were stolen virtually.
In 2019, Adam Munro said he bought four VIP tickets to Elton John's May 2020 show at the coliseum. The tickets were a Christmas gift to his wife Tori, who is a big Elton John fan. Their wedding song was the singer's hit song "Tiny Dancer."
The Greensboro concert was later rescheduled to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The show is part of the music icon's "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour. According to Elton John's website, after more than 50 years on the road, the 75-year-old plans to retire from touring.
After waiting for years, the Munros were thrilled to finally see Elton John. However, when they looked at their virtual Ticketmaster tickets on Tuesday, the day of the concert, three of the four were gone. The Munros said the tickets had been transferred to someone else, but they were able to cancel the transfer of one ticket.
"I’m so upset by it because he’s like one of my favorites and (he's) a legend," Tori Munro said. "To be able to say that you saw Elton John is a huge deal and iconic, and so (we're) just really bummed."
The couple reached out to Greensboro police. Adam Munro said GPD took their information and said they would follow up on Tuesday. The Munros also reached out to Ticketmaster, which acknowledged in an email that the tickets were transferred without the couple's consent.
"Upon checking, the tickets were successfully transferred and cannot be canceled. We advise you to contact the person who accepted the ticket transfer and transfer the tickets back to you," said a Ticketmaster representative in an email to Adam Munro.
Adam said GPD recommended they not go with the remaining ticket or try to confront the people who took them either.
The Munros were able to buy another ticket Tuesday night so the couple could go to the show. However, Tori's parents, who were supposed to go with them, could not attend. According to the Munros, the three seats that were stolen were empty.
Now, they are trying to see if they can get help from their credit card company, but because the tickets were bought so long ago, the process may take a while.
Andy King, the vice-president of Trinity Solutions, an IT company in Greensboro, said he's seen this type of incident before.
"It seems to happen after a phishing attack or somebody takes over the password or the account information and then they’ll log in as that person (and) steal their tickets over," King said.
King advises you to practice good cyber hygiene, like creating strong passwords and being vigilant with any correspondence on the internet.
"As much as I love technology, obviously I got to say, physical tickets might be the way to go sometimes and anything off-line can’t be hacked," King said.
The Munros said they want to warn people to always download their tickets as soon as they become available so something like this doesn't happen to anyone else.
"It makes you kind of rethink the future events and how you purchase your tickets just because we thought we had them and now they might’ve been sold to somebody else," Tori Munro said.
