World Ticket Shop: Peter Kay, Miley Cyrus and Mark Knopfler ticket scam warning

Sports fans, festival goers and music lovers should be wary of ticket scams this summer, trading standards officers have warned.
Durham County Council has started a new drive aimed at helping prevent people from being conned out of their cash.

Tick It campaign aims just to raise cognizance of fake websites, which offer cheap or hard to get tickets only to let users down when the passes fail to turn up.

Joanne Waller, Durham's head of environment, health and consumer protection, said: "The council's Fair Trading team has currently been contacted by a number of people who have been caught out by attractive looking websites. They claimed to be selling tickets for performances by artists like Mark Knopfler, Peter Kay and Miley Cyrus."Investigations have shown many of these websites are operated from overseas and not from the UK-based PO Box addresses they provide."Durham County Council is advising anyone buying tickets on the Internet to follow these guidelines:

* Check with the event arrangers to find out when tickets are being released for sale.

* Check you are able to contact the company. Make sure they provide a full postal address (not a PO Box) and a landline phone number.

* Make sure the site has a refund policy in case something goes wrong.For further advice call Consumer Direct on 08454 04 05 06.

* Use a credit card to pay for your tickets as, under the Consumer Credit Act, a card issuer is jointly liable for failure to provide goods or services if the cash price of a single ticket is more than £100.