Thousands of fans waited this morning, fingers at the ready, for Splendour in the Grass tickets to go on sale.
Unfortunately, the Moshtix website was hacked and many patrons ended up with empty bank accounts.
Gabrielle Lyons reports.
TRANSCRIPT
The three-day music festival is one of Australia’s biggest.
Seventy-five thousands fans pack the event.
But ticket buyers were in for a rude shock, and an expensive one.
Just minutes after tickets went on sale, the Moxhtix site was hacked.
Tickets were suddently on sale at half price, but the $3 booking fee skyrocketed.
Anywhere from $700 to $4,000!
Lachlan Papasavas: “Got through to the website to purchase the tickets and as we were purchasing the tickets I noticed that for two tickets they were trying to charge me a credit card fee I think was just over $1,600. I didn’t realise until I had clicked process payment.”
Angry punters flooded social media.
One tweeted: “… never been so disappointed with Splendour, spent $1000 on a ticket and didn’t notice until it was confirmed.”
Lachlan Papasavas had a close call, he didn’t complete the transaction.
Lachlan Papasavas: “I have kind of expected this kind of things before so when I am booking anything online I take a lot of screenshots of all the processing and finalised payment.”
Helena Brown, however, was not so lucky.
Her transaction went through twice.
Helena Brown: “Everything looked fine, confirmation looked fine, checked my bank account details and I had an extra $1000 taken out on top of the ticket price.”
She’s now down almost $2000, and angry about the outcome.
Helena Brown: “I wouldn’t want to risk this again.”
I was able to purchase my tickets without any hassle. 15 minutes later however, and other students were hit with outrageous credit card charges.
To make matters worse, buyers were referred to a false email and a black market web address.
Moshtix has cancelled all hacked transactions and tickets will have to be repurchased.
They say they’re contacting everyone who was overcharged.
Gabrielle Lyons, QUT News.