Taylor Swift fans missed out on tickets. A group of strangers saved them
Over the past seven months, Wendy Hughes and Yin Chiew have handled more than 700 Taylor Swift tickets and spent $20,000 snagging tickets on Ticketek.
NSW
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Over the past seven months, Wendy Hughes and Yin Chiew have handled more than 700 Taylor Swift tickets and spent $20,000 snagging tickets on Ticketek.
They have wiggled into hundreds of Taylor Swift Facebook groups, hunting for fans desperate to sell or buy tickets. They work in the dark, hunched over computer screens, their phones and laptops filled with messages from crying fans. Neither can remember the last time they slept properly.
They would be the most hated women in Australia (at least among Taylor Swift fans) if it were not for one fact – these tickets aren’t for them. Every ticket Yin and Wendy have handled has been for a stranger on the internet.
They aren’t scammers or scalpers – just two women who have made it their sole mission to help fans as possible buy and sell Taylor tickets safely.
“It wasn’t meant to be this way,” says Yin Cheiw, the founder of the Facebook group The Eras Tour Tickets (Australia Tour Feb 2024), who created the a community after being scammed $600 trying to buy tickets on social media.
She’s sitting next to Wendy Hugh, a founding member of the group. Seven months ago, these women were strangers. Now, they wear matching nail polish, finish each other’s sentences and meet weekly to help hundreds of fans get tickets.
“The group started as a way to fight misinformation, educate people and stop people being scammed,” explains Yin.
What started with Yin and Wendy has grown to be a behemoth.
The group has become the unofficial saving grace for fans let down by Ticketek. A team of dedicated admins, headed by Yin and Wendy, have matched more than 400 fans with 700 tickets.
They have become an alternative to Ticketek, a haven for people sick of fighting the online queue.
They have made dreams come true for hundreds, the group inundated with adoring posts and videos from fans across the country.
“It’s pretty hard to believe I am writing this post but the angel admins have secured me a ticket …”
“The integrity and genuine kindness of this admin team amazes me. They are literally working around the clock making sure as many of us as possible get to set foot inside those stadiums and see our girl …”
The admins, 19 Australians who have full-time jobs and lives outside of Taylor Swift, don’t take a cent for their work. It all comes down to one thing – a love of Taylor Swift.
They understood that for some fans, this concert was more than just a concert. None more so than Perth mum Nicole Gummow. She, like millions of other fans, had come to know the dreaded Ticketek queue too well.
She spent hours staring at her screen, watching the line refresh, praying her turn would be next. While some shrugged their shoulders, admitting defeat, Nicole felt sick. Her ten-year-old daughter Tilly had a severe brain tumour. There might not be a next time.
She tried everything, reaching out to radio stations, Taylor Swift’s team, Ticketek, all to get tickets for her daughter. She never expected that help would come in the form of a stranger across the other side of the country.
“I started to search, different Facebook pages and I realised that a lot of them were full of scammers and then I came across the Yin and Wendy’s group,” said Nicole.
A miracle happened. Admin Ariana Garland saw her post and stepped in, offering to sell Nicole two of her tickets.
“She sent me a message saying she had two extra tickets. I wasn’t so much as nervous about the financial lost, because even though that would be awful, it would be nothing compared to the disappointment Tilly would feel,” she said.
“The group is amazing. You go through the whole process of meeting the other person through the video call and meeting them online. To be in the group and see how much they are helping people. They have made a dream come true, and that is something I wouldn’t have been able to do myself.
“They all have other parts of their lives away from this group but the amount of work they are putting is incredible. It’s so selfless. I don’t know how you could ever repay them enough for what they are selflessly doing to help people who couldn’t get tickets get hold of tickets legitimately,” said Nicole.
“I never thought it would be a Facebook group that would make it possible,” she said.
The group has more than 8,000 members, all of which are carefully vetted, interviewed and verified by admin before they are allowed in. To enter, sellers must send admins proof of their tickets, and buyers must fill out a detailed form. They sign an agreement, all of which occurs over a supervised video call.
It’s come at a cost. The admin team are exhausted.
“We have lost sleep over this group and so has every other admin,” admits Yin.
“You get involved emotionally. We put everything on hold to do this. We just had too many buyers.
Their phones are constantly lit up with heart breaking requests from fans. They have taken the woes of every desperate Swiftie on their shoulder, not only helping them find and sell tickets, but going in to fight for them when things go wrong.
When thousands of tickets were lost to a Ticketek hack, the team were there, hounding Ticketek with messages and working desperately to find replacement tickets for those who missed out.
“It is every moment of the day. Every spare moment, waking hour we had we put into this” said Yin.
All the admins have full time jobs, full time lives. They have families and come from wide backgrounds. There’s lawyers, government workers, students and full time mums. All have been consumed by the group.
They work with military proficiency, using spreadsheets, Google Forms, sleuthing and thousands of hours of direct messages to match sellers with verified fans.
But or all the hardship there are moments of joy. Inspired by the hard work put in by admins, many sellers have started to donate their tickets to those in need.
People from all corners of Australia and even the world have been touched by the group.
A woman from Sydney bought tickets from a seller in the Philippines, while Melbourne mum Louise Reid was gifted tickets for her and her 15-year-old daughter after her seller learnt she had stage four breast cancer.
“I didn’t know if I had the opportunity in ten years time to go to her next concert. I have never seen anything like this. I think it’s unique to the Taylor Swift community. Taylor has such a generous, kind heart and I think that extends to her fan base,” she said.
Every lucky member is astounded by the admin’s generosity, like Brisbane mum Jo-Anne Lashrook, who secured tickets for her daughter Lucy through the group.
“It’s so nice to see people who are just in it for the fans, there are people getting scammed left right and centre, it’s rare to see people doing things just to help people,” she said.
The most significant test – whether or not fans will follow the agreement has played out and it’s worked. Not only have tickets landed in buyers’ hands but friendships have also been made.
The group has sparked lifelong friendships. The admin group is organising a lunch together on the weekend of the concerts.
“The core admins have grown so close; we have cried together, laughed together, and vented together. All we ever collectively wanted was to help as many people as possible go to the concert.
“We are just ordinary people who wanted to go to Taylor Swift, and we realised it was not straight forward at all. We have all come together to work out how we can make it as safe and stress free for as possible.”
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