Tavarius Felton bought a ticket for the ball more than a year ago.
"I wanted something to do just for fun, and obviously, a Bridgerton ball sounds fun and I was like, you know what let me get a ticket," Felton recalled.
According to the ticket, he paid $220 for the ball admission and Bridgerton French dining experience. He wanted to bring a friend with him but said when he went to get more tickets a few days after they went on sale, they were completely sold out.
Fast forward a year later and it was time for the ball. Felton drove from Charlotte and arrived at where the ball said it would happen. He even arrived early as he's a content creator and wanted to share everything with his followers.
"After a couple of minutes, we just keep taking pictures and it kind of starts to sink in, like, I don't think this event is going to happen," Felton said.
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Not only was the event not going to happen, it didn't seem like it was ever supposed to happen. There was a wedding happening at the event space at the same time.
"The manager was there and he told me that I'd been scammed. Like quite frankly, didn't really have a better answer than that. He said, but we only have a wedding today. We don't do Bridgerton balls. We never do balls at all. We only do weddings," Felton said.
On the ticket, Felton bought it stated the location as the Chateau Des Fleures in Angier. The ticket even had a picture of the castle.
"I really love castles, so the fact that it was in a castle and it's like America doesn't have a lot of castles. So, I was like, let me go to a castle. Let me dress it up," Felton said.
Felton reached out to Troubleshooter Diane Wilson who reached out to Chateau des Fleures. A representative with that event space told Wilson they had nothing to do with this ball and were not even aware of it until people showed up with tickets.
The representative said Chateau Des Fleures had to turn the people away because there was already a wedding booked that day. The company said it has never had a contract or done anything associated with a Bridgerton ball at any time in the past or future, and it has not given permission for any entity to post an event at their venue on Eventbrite.
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Wilson then got in touch with Eventbrite, and that company did fully refund Felton for his ticket.
"We have an elaborate fraud detection system in place that catches the vast majority of fraud attempts on our platform. We regret that this one seems to have slipped through our net, but we will learn from it to prevent similar cases in the future," an Eventbrite spokesperson said in a statement.
As for Felton, he's happy he got a full refund for his ticket and has this advice for others:
"Watch what you're buying and just try to go to the place and see if you can find anybody else that's going and connect with everybody else."
It's hard to tell if these events are scams or not, the best advice is always to pay with a credit card that way, you can dispute it, if it doesn't happen.