ZR
08-11-2017, 06:42 AM
A Toronto woman and her five friends were shocked to realize the tickets they purchased from a third party for Montreal’s Osheaga music festival were illegitimate – and she says they weren’t the only ones.
Rina Estafanos and her friends planned their travel to Montreal from Toronto a few months ago only to learn that their wristbands were illegitimate.
“We were really excited,” Estafanos told CTV News Toronto on Thursday. “It’s a bit of an event – you have to go to a completely different province but it was well worth it until we found out that the tickets were illegitimate.”
Estafanos said she came across the tickets after posting an ad on Kijiji saying she was looking for six wristbands to the festival that took place from August 4 to 6.
She said a man reached out to her saying he was selling six tickets as he was going to Cancun during that time and wanted to get rid of his tickets.
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After ensuring that the wristbands were able to be registered by calling Osheaga customer service, Estafanos met the man at Union Station to pick up the tickets.
She paid $1,400 in cash for the six tickets.
“I asked him for a receipt of the purchase,” Estafanos said. “I asked him to checkout his driver’s license to know that this was the person I was talking to and I even registered the bands at the time of the purchase.”
But, Estafanos said that when they got to the festival on the first day “none of that turned out to matter.”
“My heart just dropped – it was awful,” she said. “We came on a long journey to be there and then to be told ‘I don’t know what’s going on, you’ve got to go to will call these (wristbands) are no good’ that was really sad, really disappointing.”
When the group went to will call, Estafanos says they were told the tickets were illegitimate and their wristbands were added to a bucket filled with other illegitimate wristbands.
“There were hundreds of wristbands in there,” she said.
While sorting out purchasing their new wristbands from will call – which ended up costing them an additional $2,000, Estafanos said they spoke to people who also purchased illegitimate wristbands from the same person.
“Apparently he had gone the distance – there were some people we met from Montreal and Ottawa who were attesting to this as well,” she said.
After returning home from the festival, Estafanos says she started seeing a photo of the man circulating on social media.
“I hope he gets caught,” she said. “It’s not fair what he’s doing and it’s quite a bit of money that he took from a lot of people – a lot of very upset festival-goers.”
Estafanos said the tickets the man was selling to people, including herself, were purchased in a large quantity through Osheaga’s website and were processed through a credit card but were never paid for prior to the dates of the festival.
CTV News Toronto attempted to contact the suspect using the phone number that he was reached at by Estafanos but the calls were not returned.
Estafanos says she has filed a police report on this matter in the hopes of getting her money back.
Rina Estafanos and her friends planned their travel to Montreal from Toronto a few months ago only to learn that their wristbands were illegitimate.
“We were really excited,” Estafanos told CTV News Toronto on Thursday. “It’s a bit of an event – you have to go to a completely different province but it was well worth it until we found out that the tickets were illegitimate.”
Estafanos said she came across the tickets after posting an ad on Kijiji saying she was looking for six wristbands to the festival that took place from August 4 to 6.
She said a man reached out to her saying he was selling six tickets as he was going to Cancun during that time and wanted to get rid of his tickets.
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After ensuring that the wristbands were able to be registered by calling Osheaga customer service, Estafanos met the man at Union Station to pick up the tickets.
She paid $1,400 in cash for the six tickets.
“I asked him for a receipt of the purchase,” Estafanos said. “I asked him to checkout his driver’s license to know that this was the person I was talking to and I even registered the bands at the time of the purchase.”
But, Estafanos said that when they got to the festival on the first day “none of that turned out to matter.”
“My heart just dropped – it was awful,” she said. “We came on a long journey to be there and then to be told ‘I don’t know what’s going on, you’ve got to go to will call these (wristbands) are no good’ that was really sad, really disappointing.”
When the group went to will call, Estafanos says they were told the tickets were illegitimate and their wristbands were added to a bucket filled with other illegitimate wristbands.
“There were hundreds of wristbands in there,” she said.
While sorting out purchasing their new wristbands from will call – which ended up costing them an additional $2,000, Estafanos said they spoke to people who also purchased illegitimate wristbands from the same person.
“Apparently he had gone the distance – there were some people we met from Montreal and Ottawa who were attesting to this as well,” she said.
After returning home from the festival, Estafanos says she started seeing a photo of the man circulating on social media.
“I hope he gets caught,” she said. “It’s not fair what he’s doing and it’s quite a bit of money that he took from a lot of people – a lot of very upset festival-goers.”
Estafanos said the tickets the man was selling to people, including herself, were purchased in a large quantity through Osheaga’s website and were processed through a credit card but were never paid for prior to the dates of the festival.
CTV News Toronto attempted to contact the suspect using the phone number that he was reached at by Estafanos but the calls were not returned.
Estafanos says she has filed a police report on this matter in the hopes of getting her money back.