A Georgia woman went viral on TikTok after she claimed that tickets she had purchased through Ticketmaster’s “Request” feature were stolen from her account and resold to someone else, leaving her locked out of an Ariana Grande concert she had been looking forward to for months.
The woman, who posts on TikTok under the handle @drpepperprincessaa, said she bought two tickets in February through Ticketmaster’s Request option for the Ariana Grande Eternal Sunshine Tour at State Farm Arena in Atlanta. According to her videos, she only discovered the alleged theft when she arrived at the venue on July 9, the night of the show.
In her original video, she warned her followers directly: “This is your sign to not buy Ticketmaster Request tickets because we bought tickets through Ariana’s Ticketmaster Request thing in February and we showed up. It’s July 9th, we’re ready for the show. The show started like 30 minutes ago and they told us that someone got into my account in May and transferred my tickets out.”
The Georgia woman says she was charged $170.24 and had ticket confirmations, but no barcode appeared in her account
According to her videos, she and a friend, for whom it would also have been a first time seeing Ariana Grande, arrived at State Farm Arena around 7:30 PM. She said they were directed from the box office to Will Call, where they received conflicting information. One gate reportedly told her the tickets were under her name, while Will Call staff allegedly said the tickets were never fully transferred to her name and were also listed under someone else’s name.
By 9:22 PM, nearly two hours after their arrival, she said staff told her there was nothing more they could do. Ariana Grande had reportedly already been performing for close to an hour at that point.
In a video filmed outside the venue, she said: “We couldn’t make it inside. I don’t know where you bought your tickets. Maybe you were unaware, but my tickets that I bought through the Ticketmaster request option in February were stolen or transferred from my account in May and given to you.” Hers is not the only case of concert tickets raising fraud concerns at the venue door.
When a commenter suggested she may never have actually had the tickets, writing, “so it sounds like you never actually had tickets if you don’t have the barcode, you don’t have a ticket and your account never got charged”, she responded directly.
“And I definitely got charged,” she wrote, sharing a screenshot of her Ticketmaster order showing Section 226, Row H, Seats 14 and 15, with a charge of $170.24. She added: “this is what my tickets look like on the tickmaster app idk they look pretty real to me aside from the missing barcode.”
According to Ticketmaster’s own website, once a request is fulfilled, the company charges the buyer’s card and sends a second email confirming the tickets are available in their Ticketmaster account, a process the woman said she went through.
Venue staff reportedly advised her to dispute the charge with her bank, as they said they work for the venue and not Ticketmaster. In a later clarification post, she stated she had not used any third-party resale sites and that her tickets came directly from Ticketmaster.
She also said she had all recommended account security protections enabled at the time of the alleged theft, though she acknowledged she had forgotten to add the tickets to her digital wallet, something she described as unusual for her.
She said that she specifically blames the Request feature, noting: “I blame ticket request bc it was my first time using it and this kind of thing never happened to me when I do regular Ticketmaster sales.”
Some commenters on her videos were skeptical, with one user suggesting she “just got hacked putting her password somewhere else,” while another user wrote that Ticketmaster had “always been safe and reliable” for them personally.
Another commenter questioned whether she had confirmed receiving the ticket, writing: “It’s a request, not a guarantee. It’s essentially a lotto,” to which another user replied that she had said she received and added them to her wallet. Security experts often warn that ignoring small suspicious account charges can be an early sign of a larger breach.
One commenter said she had experienced a related issue, writing: “I paid over $300 for someone to transfer a ticket to me, then they got unhappy that they couldn’t get a free lift into the venue from me, and recalled the ticket and refused to give me my money back. Turns out in that situation the ticket is then under two names, and so the first person to get into the venue gets to use it.”
Reports of similar incidents appear to be widespread. A Reddit thread on the same issue includes accounts from multiple users who claimed their Ticketmaster tickets were stolen through unauthorized account access and resold, in some cases appearing on StubHub shortly after.
Several users said they missed their events entirely after being unable to reach Ticketmaster’s fraud department in time.
One commenter noted: “Ticketmaster has known about this problem for years and has done nothing about it. A 2FA requirement for transfers, like they require for password changes, would be a start.” Users who said they successfully recovered their tickets reported calling Ticketmaster’s fraud line starting at 9:00 AM EST, describing the process as requiring repeated attempts before reaching a live agent.
Ticketmaster’s official website describes the Request feature as a way for fans to “ditch the alarm and skip the queue” for popular shows, stating that cards are only charged once a request is fulfilled and tickets are confirmed.
However, the page contains no guidance on what happens if tickets are stolen or transferred out of a buyer’s account after fulfillment. It also makes no mention of fraud protections specific to Request tickets.
Ticketmaster’s general stolen ticket guidance, listed separately on its website, simply directs customers to contact Fan Support with their order number or payment card, with no acknowledgment of unauthorized transfers as a known issue. Ticketmaster has not publicly responded to the viral videos as of the time of writing.
Published: Jul 13, 2026 07:23 am