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| Photo: Nick Barber |
How to Trade with Other Fans
This Guide Will Cover These Sections:
1. Introduction and Warning
2. High Probability Trades
3. How To Find a Trade
4. Only use Paypal G&S
5. How to Trade Safely - The Basic Steps
6. If Your Trade Goes Bad
1. Introduction and Warning
Trading is riskier than simply buying or selling tickets. I wanted to state that upfront. There are definitely times when it makes sense to trade - if you have tickets you can't use or don't want to use, but there is another show you could go to, trading can be the fastest way to make that switch happen. But there are a lot of things that can go wrong during a trade, if you aren't careful. Before you proceed any further, make sure you have read Sections 1-11 of the Buying Guide and Sections 5-6 of the Selling Guide. It's a lot of reading, but if you don't know the basics of buying and selling, you are definitely not ready to trade safely. If you already traded in an unsafe way and got scammed, you can try calling the Ticketmaster Fraud Prevention Line at 888-731-4111 and pleading your case with them.
2. High Probability Trades
If you want to trade and have a good chance of finding someone who will accept the trade, you need to be offering a trade that makes sense aka a trade where both parties to the trade benefit. Asking to trade 2 nosebleed seats for 2 floor/lower bowl seats in the same venue is unlikely to entice anyone unless you offer a lot of cash on top of your tickets (more than the difference in face value in most cases). Trading 2 tickets for 4 tickets that are seated together is also a tough sell unless you are willing to downgrade your seats and probably offer cash on top as well. You can find these "advantage" trades, but it would typically be a good idea to wait for someone to post a request for the trade you want first and contact them, as if you make an ISO (in search of) post asking for a trade in your favor, you might get more scammers than legitimate offers.
Trading X number of tickets for the same number of tickets on a different date or at a different venue is a common and even trade that is likely to find a trade partner as long as you are willing to trade for similar seats, or offer cash to make up for any difference in seats. Trading 3+ tickets that are seated together for 2 tickets seated together at the same venue is also a high-demand trade that is likely to find you a trade partner. If you felt that you spent too much on your tickets and want to downgrade while receiving some cash back, that is also a trade that is likely to find a lot of offers.
Also keep in mind that on-site VIP perks do not transfer with ticket ownership (and physical VIP merch is sent to the original buyer as well), so trade partners are unlikely to value VIP tickets at a premium to their own non-VIP tickets, if the seats are of similar quality.
3. How to Find a Trade
See Section 2 of the Buying Guide for a list of Facebook groups where you can find trades and post trade offers. You can find trades almost anywhere online, just keep the lessons you learned on spotting scammers in Section 3 of the buying guide in mind when vetting trade partners.
Trading does differ from buying in a key way - someone has to make an ISO post to get the trade started typically. If nobody posts that they want to trade, no one will be trading, that much is obvious. That being said, if you want to minimize your chances of interacting with a scammer, it is typically in your best interest to wait for someone to post a trade offer that interests you and respond to them, versus making your own ISO trade post. Trade scammers typically work in a reactive way - they will see someone's trade post and then go photoshop or steal the "proof" of tickets they need and then go approach the ISO poster with their scam trade offer.
So you are a bit safer if you respond to trade offers instead of making your own trade post. Obviously if you need to trade quickly or have a specific trade in mind, you might need to make an ISO trade post regardless. And keep in mind that trade scammers can also make their own ISO trade posts, especially if their offer is very broad. "Trading 2 LA tickets for 2 tickets at any other venue in April or May" or something similar would get a lot of interest, and is slightly more likely to be a post made by a scammer than a trade offer that is more specific.
4. Only Use Paypal G&S
Wait, didn't I already read this in the buying guide? Why do I need Paypal G&S for trading? Well there are a couple reasons. Firstly, the whole trade will be structured as a series of buys and sells using Paypal G&S, more on that in the next section. The reason for structuring the trade this way is because sending a ticket "for free" to start a trade is just begging to get scammed. All the recipient has to do if they are a scammer is to take the ticket you send them and run, and hope that Ticketmaster won't do anything about it (hit and miss on whether they will get involved). And while Ticketmaster decides whether to get involved, the scammer could take that same ticket and go "trade" it to someone else, or offer to send it someone first in exchange for Zelle payment, you get the idea.
Don't ever send a ticket to someone for free unless you are actually giving it to them for free. The other reason Paypal G&S gets used in trades is to "even out" trade deals where someone is paying cash to make up for a difference in quality or number of seats.
5. How to Trade Safely - The Basic Steps
Verify that your trade partner has a legit looking profile on whatever site you found them on and doesn't act like a typical scammer would, see Section 3 of the Buying Guide for more details on that.
Request a screen recording of the tickets that the person is offering to trade. In the recording, they should go from their chat with you to the tickets in their ticketmaster/seatgeek app and type your name into the transfer box to prove they didn't take the screen recording from someone else. Section 5 of the Selling Guide has more details on this. Obviously you should be sending your trade partner a similar screen recording of your own tickets as well.
If the screen recording checks out, agree on the details of the trade with your partner. Are you trading the tickets evenly or is someone offering cash on top to even out the deal? How much extra is that person paying?
This step is not strictly necessary but is very helpful to make sure the trade is legit - both trade partners should explain where they got their tickets from and provide proof of that, through screenshots of ticketmaster/stubhub/paypal receipts and preferably through forwarded emails of those receipts. This step decreases the likelihood that you are trading for tickets someone obtained illegitimately and that can be voided by ticketmaster. Section 4, Step#3 of the Buying Guide has more details on this.
Explain to your trade partner that you want to structure the trade as a series of buys and sells on Paypal. You can direct them to this guide if they have questions. The gist of it is that your partner will be "selling" their tickets to you through Paypal G&S and you will be "selling" them yours in the same way. That way if anyone runs off with a ticket, you will at least be compensated for it with money.
If multiple tickets are being traded, someone will "sell" their trade partner one ticket, then the trade partner will "sell" them one of theirs, and you can repeat that sequence in alternating order until all tickets have been "sold". If an uneven number of tickets are being trading you can work out what kind of alternating order you want to use.
So you are "selling" tickets to your trade partner and "buying" their tickets? What price should you buy and sell at? That depends on what you are prioritizing:
If you want to minimize paypal G&S fees (3% of the sale) and taxes (taxes on profit only - what you sell a ticket at minus what you originally paid for it, see Section 13 of the Selling Guide), you can sell each other tickets at face value. Face value should be the absolute lowest amount you sell or buy for. And make no mistake that there are dishonest people who would be happy to "buy" a single ticket at face value and then leave the trade. But if you trust your trade partner, face value is a very legitimate option.
The other option is to price the tickets higher, maybe closer to the value they would sell for on a resale site. This removes any incentive to take a ticket and run, and also leaves you happier if the show you traded for gets canceled and the money from the tickets you sold is all you have left. But pricing the tickets higher leads to higher paypal fees and also can lead to taxes on your sale, if you sold your tickets at a higher price than you originally paid for them (the IRS doesn't care that you also paid more for your traded tickets, they are just looking at what you did with your original tickets).
In addition to deciding how to generally price the tickets in the trade as described in the previous step, if either party was going to throw in extra cash, that should be baked into the prices you are buying/selling the tickets at. So do some math and figure out what works best. If you agree that the difference in face value is all you need and you are buying/selling at face value, this takes care of itself naturally.
Now that both you and your trade partner feel comfortable with how the trade will be conducted, agree on a time to call or better yet facetime your trade partner and do the trade. Whoever agreed to sell a ticket first will be paid for that ticket by their trade partner using the info in Section 4, Step 5 of the Buying Guide. Then the "seller" will send that ticket to the "buyer" using the info in Section 6, Step 4 of the Selling Guide. Now the trade partners will reverse roles - the person who just "bought" a ticket will now "sell" one of their tickets to their trade partner - repeat this process until all tickets are traded.
Once all tickets have been traded, thank your trade partner and screen record or screenshot any electronic communication for documentation purposes.
* In one of my previous trade guides, I discussed the possibility of refunding all of the paypal payments to each other in alternating order to avoid the paypal fees and any possible taxes. I recommend against that now because it leaves you open to losing money if the show you traded for is canceled or if the tickets you traded for are voided later (see Step 10 above). If you absolutely trust that your trade partner is legit and will do the right thing in all circumstances, you can refund each other if you wish.
6. If Your Trade Goes Bad
If necessary, see Section 10 of the Buying Guide for advice on what to do if your trade partner doesn't send the ticket you paid for. See Section 9 of the Selling Guide for advice on what to do if your trade partner files a Paypal dispute on you later. If the tickets you traded for get voided by Ticketmaster, see Section 9 of the Buying Guide. If your trade partner claims their tickets have been voided, see Section 10 of the Selling Guide. If the event you traded for gets canceled or postponed, see Section 11 of the Buying Guide. If you ignored this guide and someone straight up took your ticket(s), you can try calling the Ticketmaster Fraud Prevention Line at 888-731-4111 and pleading your case with them.
