Police, patrons warn of ticket scams and theft ahead of ACL

AUSTIN, Texas - With the Austin City Limits music festival set to kick off in less than a month, the Austin Police Department is encouraging festival goers to only purchase wristbands from "authorized vendors."

"Don't purchase your tickets from anybody that you do not know. There's no way to track that," said Cpl. Destiny Silva.

Cynthia Seifert, who purchased her tickets online from authorized vendor Front Gate tickets, says her wristbands failed to arrive for the second year in a row.

"Literally an empty envelope, nothing in it. It was already opened and nothing. It was completely empty," Seifert said, of the UPS package delivered to her porch that should have contained four wristbands. 

Last year she had the same issue with USPS.

Initially, Seifert thought porch pirates were to blame, but her doorbell camera quickly debunked that theory.

"The guy delivered it and then no one else had been on the porch," she explained. She believes the wristbands were likely stolen or lost in transit.

"You know, some people (on Reddit) made jokes saying, ‘hey, your mailman gets me the ACL tickets every year,’ you know, just being funny," she said.

Jokes aside — Seifert says theft is her primary concern. 

"The frustrating thing for me is that I feel bad for people that may purchase the wristbands that were stolen."

After Seifert contacted Front Gate the company deactivated the wristbands and told her she could pick up replacements at the festival box office. Ticketmaster, which owns Front Gate, gave FOX 7 Austin a statement encouraging others in similar predicaments to follow suit.

"If you're going to buy, resell ACL tickets, make sure you activate them in front of the person before you give them the money because you may be getting my stolen wristbands," said Seifert.