If you are thinking of scoring some cheap Calgary stampede tickets online, be careful — scammers are targeting those desperate to attend the festival at a cheaper cost. One Calgary mom says she has lost almost a hundred bucks to an online scammer.
“I have three kids, I’m low income, so I don’t really have a lot of money to be spending on this types of things, and it’s frustrating that people take advantage of people like that, or that they’re even able to do it,” Brayden Mountain told CityNews. “Like if the codes on the stuff are activated, why are we able to enter them into the website? It’s not very scam protected, because there is no way to know.”
Mountain paid $45 to an online seller for a 10-day Super Pass, which offers unlimited gate entry for the duration of the Calgary Stampede.
But, she couldn’t activate it on the AXS app after she got it from the seller.
When she contacted Stampede officials, they asked for a receipt, which she asked the seller for, and instantly got blocked.
Mountain claims her AXS account was flagged which caused her to lose an online entry ticket worth $25, and then she had to buy another $25 paper ticket to enter the grounds and talk to the Stampede staff.
But, it was all in vain.
“They should be doing something because I challenged it with my bank and they said without a police report they can’t do anything,” Mountain said.
She says she is overwhelmed with her kids and didn’t get the time to report the incident to police.
Scammers are reportedly also targeting people looking for rodeo and concert tickets. Another Stampede-goer CityNews spoke to shared how he made a safe purchase of rodeo tickets, while chasing away scammers who were not even located in Alberta or Canada.
“They ask for Western Union, they asked for a non-authorized way to people get money back and the best way to get around this is really using PayPal goods and services,” Sylvain Lauzon. “I was able to find a lovely lady in Red Deer to sell me couple of tickets for Saturday.
Calgary Police Services says the Stampede Command Team has reported only two scam incidents to them.
In a statement to CityNews, the Calgary Stampede says the SuperPass is no longer for sale this year, but for the future, recommends buying passes from calgarystampede.com or a verified official retailer to make sure they receive a verifiable SuperPass.
“Every SuperPass sold by a retail partner (Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, FreshCo, Chalo) has its own unique code to activate and verify the card,” Stampede officials said. “When the card is activated using the code on our website, the purchaser receives their digital SuperPass. In cases where a person tries to activate the card but the code cannot be verified, the Calgary Stampede makes every effort to help them verify it through proof of purchase.