Whatsapp groups can be a great place to meet other people in your halls, course and general uni, but beware of scammers! Many people join these groups from the "community" section on whatsapp thinking its run by the uni, but this isnt true and its the admins who tend to be in on it.
Like every few days, especially after a bunch of people join the group, the same few users will pop up. They keep to a similar script each time and use their numbers to kinda peer pressure you into bying tickets for freshers. Its all "who else is buying freshers?" "i am - and so is everyone else in all the other groups im in" (despite them being the ones mentioning them; noone else i know is getting them) and "get them before they triple in price - im getting the I Love X ones, theyre refundable!"
Not sure if those actually are refundable, as someone in a group im in bought into their pressure and bought it, tried to refund it and has not heard back since.
Also its March! March! This is for September! Also your uni will be running events, and even if you were to get tickets, you often do freshers stuff with your flatmates, and whats the likelyhood of them having tickets to outside events as well, let alone the specific ones youve bought.
Further evidence that this is a pretty shady and scummy thing:
- Me and some others pointed out the shadiness and suspiciousness of this, the peer pressure, the repeated conversations every week by the same script, the way that these people are only active in the chat for this one bit, they never talk about anything else
- And... we were kicked from the group! The admin(s) were that crowd.
After we left (im in a separate gc with some of the others from the main uni chat so i was able to find out):
- Some of our messages pointing out this stuff were deleted by the admins
- They called us "high-school bullies," of all things. no idea why this was the epithet of choice, and certainly a) isnt true and b) has no relation to the discourse at hand and c) is a pretty weak insult tbh
So yeah! Stay safe out there, do join groups to meet people but like just dont trust promoters and beware of possible scams.