How to Not Get Screwed Buying Bootleg Tickets off Craigslist or Wherever

Yes, there are safe-ish peer-to-peer buying platforms available. But unless we're taking instant download, buying tickets online is too ethereal a process for us physical beings, compared to a face-to-face exchange with a stranger during which you can exercise some tangible control.

The best way to avoid getting screwed by doing something improperly is to avoid doing it at all, which is obvious to people with a lot of self control and no imagination. Here are rules for the rest of us:

1. Meet Face-to-face

It's the only way. If you're trying to tango with Bitcoin escrow I don't know what to tell you except, don't. You're on your own.

2. Put Your Gullibility in Your Pocket

Bootleggers will offer up plausible tidbits. They won tickets at work and aren't interested in going? They bought tickets in advance and now they have to leave town unexpectedly? LIES, all lies. Enter into shady dealings assuming that people are fundamentally greedy and self-serving and the human being with whom you're trying to have a mutually beneficial interaction is lying to your stupid face. Don't concoct a believable story in your head to psych yourself into a reality where you're getting the tickets you want. Stay shrewd.

3. Bring a Friend Who Doesn't Care about the Event

Excitement will blind you. Megafans get GA tickets to sold-out shows in their hot hands and don't notice that the Ticketmaster logo is drawn with crayon. Bring impartial counsel who can help you inspect the tickets before you pay.

Just because they're screwing you over, doesn't mean they're not screwing you over:

I went to them and Waited on a bench for 45 minutes and finally blew me off- why would they do that if

4. Proper Inspection: Stand in the Light

Inspect your ticket thoroughly! Meet inside a brightly lit space like a coffee shop or bookstore. Bootleggers are like cockroaches, they're scared of bright lights and crowds.

5. Proper Inspection: Tear it

I used to make bootleg tickets by

6. Proper Inspection: Look at the back

Bootleggers often don't pay as much attention to the front of the ticket as the back, and they're hoping you won't, either.

7. Proper Inspection: Look for unique barcodes

Lazy asshole bootleggers don't always bother to change the barcode numbers on the tickets they fake. If you're buying more than one ticket, check the numbers to make sure they're unique. If you're only buying one, pretend you want three. A bootlegger probably isn't going to miss an opportunity to scam you thrice, and this will give you the chance to compare the tickets and make sure they all have different barcodes, even if you only buy one in the end.

8: Proper Inspection:

9. Beware sad stories:

Gregarious scammers will distract you with a humanizing story about something sad going on in their lives: my dog died, my house burned down,  I just lost my job, etc. LIES!

10. Beware the Need-to-leave Text

"Aw shit, my baby mama just texted me that my son is sick, I gotta go."

What to do if you get stuck with a bootleg ticket

Try again day-of. Tickets tend to get released the morning of the show. If you're buying multiple GA tickets, try changing the quantity to 1, and buy your tickets in multiple transactions.