ticket scamming

[Steve Weinman]

With Finals tickets having sold out so quickly on Monday, I'm sure we have no shortage of folks around here (self included) pursuing other routes to get tickets (Stubhub, craiglist, etc.).  Since there can at times be at least a semi-significant amount of risk that comes along with some of those routes, just wanted to throw out a quick advisory onto an apparent scam that I stumbled onto this morning...

Contacted a craigslist poster via e-mail and received what appeared to be a very reasonable selling price for balcony seats to the game on Sunday.  As we were preparing to move forward with a possible transaction, I was sent a list of instructions for going through an intermediary called Square Trade in order to execute a wire transfer.  Having realized at this point that the correspondence from the other end appeared more in "form-letter" style than response to my e-mail, a call was placed to Square Trade -- at which point I was informed that they don't get involved with any sort of ticket brokering deals or anything of the like and that any possible transaction that I was looking into was likely a scam.  Needless to say, I changed courses at that point.

Long story short -- for anyone using craigslist type services, be wary of anyone suggesting usage of this "Square Trade" business.  Can't imagine I'm the only one who could have been receiving that sort of email, and just wanted to give a heads-up to all.  Thanks for the time.

-sw

[Redz]

I had a really good experience using FirstDibz.  You can buy tickets for Games 6 & 7 still. They're getting pricy and they don't refund your "reserve" price if the game never happens, but they are reliable.  I used them for Game 1 of both the Atlanta and Cleveland series.  The seats were in section 325 (way up), but I actually liked the view of the court up there.

http://www.firstdibz.com/sportsMyTeam.html?ugid=696398012&eventId=700008164&teamId=700011206