Kansas mom, daughter’s Taylor Swift tickets vanish hours before the concert

By Jackson Kurtz

Click here for updates on this story

    OLATHE, Kansas (KMBC) — For 10-year-old Irelyn Dunlay, it was a dream come true.

“The biggest fan in the world. Let me just keep it out that way!” said Dunlay.

Dunlay and her mother, Annie, were set to see Taylor Swift at the Superdome in New Orleans on October 27th, after a 13-hour drive from their home in Olathe.

“I was all jumping up and down and really. What?” said Dunlay.

The night before, the $1,912 total worth of tickets were good to go in her Ticketmaster app and in her Google Wallet.

But the next day, once they got in line before the concert started, the tickets were gone.

“I pulled up my Google Wallet and the barcode was gone that we had for our tickets, and I was like, so of course I needed to step out of line. And, I quickly go to my Ticketmaster app and it says that your tickets aren’t ready yet,” said Dunlay.

Once she took a closer look, Dunlay says Ticketmaster told her the tickets aren’t quite ready yet, and to check back later.

Google Wallet said the tickets were invalid.

“I just had this sinking feeling in my gut of, oh my gosh, we just drove 13 hours. our friends are already in there,” said Dunlay.

Dunlay spent three hours on the phone with Ticketmaster and StubHub trying to get inside to see the megastar.

“And that’s kind of when the panic really started to set in, and we just kind of kept meeting roadblock. Roadblock after roadblock,” said Dunlay.

Eventually, staff at the Superdome let them inside, but not without missing a good chunk of the show.

Even though we were able to get in, see it. i mean, we had three hours of tears and phone calls and stress leading up to it. I don’t know what I would recommend to other people other than go to local shows, you know, like support smaller companies that are putting on shows,” said Dunlay.

Ticketmaster did give us an update as we were working on our story.

The company says the tickets were originally stolen and then sold to Dunlay on StubHub.

The tickets were then removed from her account by Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster says they are going to provide her with a $500 gift card.

As for StubHub, Ticketmaster says Dunlay still needs to provide documentation to get a full refund from them.

We reached out to StubHub but have not yet heard back.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.