People with "Olympic tickets wanted to buy" signs are popping up all over the city. They also sell tickets -- but if you're going to do business with them you do so at your own risk. Chris Olsen is on your side with a new warning from VANOC.
Elizabeth and Betty Castro waited in a long line in downtown Vancouver's Robson Square to pick up their Olympic ice skating tickets.
'We're picking up the men's free style and exhibition," Elizabeth said.
They paid over three thousand dollars for them from the VANOC Fan to Fan marketplace website.
"It was a bidding war that got very intense and many hours later I was the winner at a really high price," she said.
"It's worth it though to be here it's a once in a life time opportunity you've got to go for it," Betty said.
So why didn't they try another route -- like Craig's List or a scalper on the street?
"Rather be safe than sorry right? Don't want to take that kind of chance when you are paying that kind of money," Elizabeth said.
There is no way to tell if a ticket is genuine until you get to the door and the barcodes are run through a scanner.
‘It could have been a real ticket and it got stolen out of a car and so the bar code is invalid. It may be a ticket that's just been created and was never valid," warned VANOC's Vice President of Ticketing, Caley Denton.
Denton says there's little VANOC can do if you buy a ticket that turns out to be invalid.
"They would be sent to a ticket resolution office at the venue and essentially if we didn't have a solution for them they wouldn't get in," he said.
The solution would be for you to buy another ticket -- the money you've already spent is lost.
"If there was no legitimate ticket that we could sell them they wouldn't get in because all the seats are full," Denton said.
So if you are buying tickets from a source other than VANOC -- or an official ticket reseller -- it's a gamble.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Chris Olsen
