It was one of those days that I’ll never forget – the day we found out about the fake VidCon black badge. This was something my friends and I had worked and looked forward to for months, and we couldn’t believe it. All of our plans and dreams of being able to attend VidCon were suddenly put on hold. It was devastating, to say the least.
I remember sitting with my friends at the local coffee shop, talking about what we should do. None of us knew what to do, and we felt helpless. I remember one of my friends, Julie, who was always the optimistic one, said something that made us all laugh. “Well I guess now I’m going to have to make my own ‘fake VidCon’ just for us.” We all had a good laugh, but under the surface, we all knew that we wanted to go to the real thing. It felt like a huge letdown.
We talked about the fake VidCon black badge for hours, trying to figure out what we could do. How had we not noticed that something was up? How had we not seen the signs? We had all done our research and checked every detail of the ticket and looked at every website the company had put up, but still we had been duped.
We ended up deciding that the best course of action would be to check in with the local police and file a complaint. We hoped that someone could do something to get us the money back we had already paid. We knew it was a long shot, but at least we felt like we were doing something to make sure this didn’t happen to anyone else.
The next few days were spent calling and trying to sort everything out. We sent emails, made phone calls, and filled out report forms, but nothing was getting us anywhere. We knew that the company was long gone, and that our chances of getting our money back was slim to none.
I remember feeling so disheartened at the thought that someone had been so cruel and taken advantage of all of us. We put our trust in them-and they had made us all look like fools. We shared our stories with each other, feeling frustrated and angry at the same time. We all had a similar thought –this could have easily have been prevented.
Finally, after weeks of back and forth, we got our families involved and got the police and news involve and managed to get our money back. Although it was a long and hard road, it felt like a major win for us.
When we finally got our money back, there was a sense of relief. We had made it through the ordeal and come out stronger. We knew now that we could trust our instincts and be careful when it came to stuff like this. We vowed to be more vigilant and to always stick together, and we were determined to never let someone like this ruin our dreams ever again.