HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Buying merchandise before the Taylor Swift concert is hard enough, with some fans camping out overnight.
But it's nothing compared to trying to get tickets for one of the three sold-out shows at Raymond James Stadium.
"It was a nightmare," said Riley Watson.
"The website crashed and crashed," added Angie Hernandez, who said she got locked out of every pre-sale.
Even fans who eventually got tickets are still traumatized by the process.
"We were in the queue for 8-9 hours. We were there for a really long time," said Lila Baty.
That chaos has led to multiple lawsuits against Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation.
The two companies merged in 2010.
"We apologize to Miss Swift. We need to do better and we will do better," Live Nation CFO Jeff Berchtold.
"How was it that 10,000 tickets are on the resale market within 8 hours of this ticket sale," asks attorney Jennifer Kinder who is representing 355 people in a lawsuit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
She's accusing the companies of negligence and error to drive up demand and price.
"Taylor Swift fans aren't frustrated because they didn't get a ticket. That's not the point. The point is they didn't have a fair chance to get a ticket," Kinder said.
The lawsuits also claimed that since Ticketmaster has agreements with the stadiums like Raymond James, artists like Taylor Swift have no choice but to work with them.
ABC Action News talked with a mom from Tallahassee who's part of a lawsuit against Ticketmaster.
"It's clear that it's a game that they play. It's a monopoly. It's a scheme. It's s swindler. It's just not cool," said Laura Watson.
Live Nation said it does not embrace deceptive and questionable secondary ticketing practices.
And its CFO told Congress they'd spent more than a billion dollars on improving Ticketmaster's systems.
"Much of this was on technologies to eliminate fraud and to get tickets to fans instead of ticket scalpers using bots. A prime example of which is our verified fan service," said Berchtold.
But many say that verified fan service failed too and even those with verified fans' pre-sale codes came up empty.
One way or another, around 200,000 fans will see Swift perform in Tampa this week.
"It shouldn't be that hard for fans to get tickets to concerts with reasonable prices. We are willing to pay a reasonable price. $2000 or $3000 seat is not a reasonable price," said Watson.
