Tips to Avoid Getting Scammed for Alabama Football Tickets

With football season well underway, and a stretch of four consecutive home games approaching for the Alabama Crimson Tide, many people are taking to social media platforms and other sites to buy, sell and upgrade tickets to games.

Buying Alabama football tickets online can be cheaper, but you also run the chance of being scammed and paying for a ticket you don't receive. That being said, there are tips you can follow to lower the likely of being scammed.

These tips were gathered from an interview with Dave Love, administrator of the mega-popular Facebook group the Alabama Student Ticket Exchange, which boasts more than 76,000 members. Love, who has been an admin for three years, says that he tries to educate people in the group to prevent ticket scamming.

Do not pay via Venmo or CashApp, where you often cannot get a refund.
"Those are considered friends and family, [which] means that if I send you money, it's one-way, like Bitcoin, you can't get a refund," Love said. "So if it's PayPal goods and services, you can get a refund. The main thing to remember is don't just send money off to the internet and hope that the tickets show up.

Report scammers. When you are scammed or see someone you know is a scammer trying to sell tickets online, report them.
"I kick out anyone that gets reported for scamming; no questions asked," Love said. "I just go in and block them because they're always like [a] student's parents or some random guy, and you know I just kick them out."
Love says that many scammers use the same language. For example, currently, a popular way to scam people is to comment "message me" on an "in search of (ISO)" tickets post.
"The latest thing for whatever reason is people saying 'hey I want tickets,' and then someone will say, 'message me,'" Love said. "This year, believe it or not, that has been the code word for scamming."
Love also recommends that when you see someone online using scamming language or know they have scammed others, you should report the post. In his Facebook group, Love says that he investigates reported posts.
"'ll go look at the post because sometimes I don't kick people out who are legitimate, [but] I would just say report it so I can actually like investigate it," Love said.

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Use Student Seats. Recently, a website and app were created for students to buy and sell tickets to prevent scamming. This service is only available to University of Alabama students.

Meet in person so that you can pay in cash. Love believes this is one of "the safest ways" to buy tickets.
"I mean, paying in cash is just as good as anything," Love said. "I recommend meeting the guy and getting the tickets [in person] because a lot of these guys are like local hustlers, and they've got tickets, so they'll meet you at the game and give you the tickets."

Read the announcements in the Alabama Student Ticket Exchange Facebook group. Love says that all of his tips are posted in his Facebook group in the announcements area at the top of the page.
"Read the announcements because if you read them, you'll find everything we're talking about right now is actually there," Love said.

Love says that the best tip he has is to "use common sense."

"There's a lot of ways to try and help people, you know at the end of the day they need to like use common sense, and a lot of times they get scammed, and I'm just like man, you just fell for it," Love said.