Music fans upset over fake V tickets

Fraudsters from overseas have conned music fans hoping to go to this weekend's V Festival at Weston Park by setting up a fake tickets website, it emerged today.

The webpage, www.v-festival-2009. com, which claimed to be the premier V Festival 2009 ticket site, was today confirmed as bogus by the organisers of the actual event.

One disappointed fan who was scammed by the "convincing" site was Cherie-Anne Baxter, aged 25, from Erdington, who was planning to go to the event with friends.

Miss Baxter, of Tower Road, bought a weekend pass for £142 from the site in May but started to worry after not receiving anything in the post.

"The email I received when I initially booked stated I would get them seven days before the event but I still haven't got them," said Miss Baxter. "I went on the internet and read a blog about V Festival ticket scams. People had gone onto the same website as me and had not received their tickets."

Miss Baxter, a recruitment consultant who works in Birmingham, then phoned her credit card company to see if the money had been taken out of her account.

"The man I spoke to confirmed £142 had been taken out of my account by a company called Budapest Tickets which doesn't sound quite right. I can't believe this has happened."

Miss Baxter, who would have been going to the festival at Weston Park this weekend for only the second time and was looking forward to seeing The Killers and Keane perform, admitted she was devastated to find out the site was fake.

"I'd saved up all year for this event only to be left disappointed," she said. "I'm not going to be able to go now and I'm really upset.

"I've been looking forward to V Festival all year and had been talking about it with all my friends. I don't know how these people sleep at night. The website looked so real. I never thought at the time that it was fake.

"When I typed V Festival into the internet, this site was top of the list – it was very convincing. My credit card company has told me I should get my money back but what if I don't?

"I called trading standards but they say they can't do anything because it is a foreign website."

Around 90,000 revellers will be flocking to Weston Park in Staffordshire from Friday for the festival, which takes place on Saturday and Sunday. Drivers are being warned of lengthy tailbacks along the A5, A449, A41 and the M6 and M54 motorways over the weekend and on Monday, when campers leave the site.

Highways bosses at Staffordshire County Council predict that the worst times for jams will be Friday and Monday mornings.

Stages were today being set up in preparation for performers including Oasis, Snow Patrol, Fatboy Slim and Lily Allen.