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The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

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Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#71

Post by forrestthewoods »

If the seller changed their mind and pulled their tickets then StubHub should own up and say so. The tickets weren't listed "incorrectly". They were sold correctly but then the seller refused to forward the tickets when the price changed.

StubHub and similar services should also guarantee ticket possession within 7 days. If you buy the tickets you get the tickets immediately. It's bullshit that you buy the tickets but don't receive them for weeks or months. That's too big of a window to let sellers change their mind.

I bought tickets through SeatGeek via BigTicket for on November, 19th for a January 7th show (tonight!). I wasn't told at time of purchase that my tickets would not be delivered until after January 1st. In fact I wasn't told until I e-mailed customer support and asked where the hell my e-mail delivery tickets were. I expect e-mail delivery to be instantaneous. Not 7 weeks later and 6 days before showtime.

What if the Lakers ticket seller had until the final week to deliver tickets? If they're expensive today they'll be even more expensive then!

This is inexcusable and StubHub is fully responsible for the situation. They do not get to shift blame to the seller.

Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#72

Post by mikeash »

URSpider94 wrote: post #67
mikeash wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

eBay takes complete responsibility for the transactions that they facilitate. eBay guarantees that your item will ship and be delivered within a certain time and will be as described. The seller can still mess with you, but the timeframe is limited and eBay will handle the dispute. AirBnB is more of a "sucks to be you" style when it comes to canceled reservations, which is pretty weak.

At the end of the day, the most eBay will do is make sure you get your money back if the seller doesn't deliver. That's exactly what StubHub did, AND they offered him hundreds in gift certificates as well. The problem here is that getting one's money back doesn't feel like enough, because you're losing out on massive appreciation of the purchase between when you bought it and now. This is one of the most difficult cu…

With eBay the seller also has to deliver in a timely fashion. You're right, if they fail then the best that happens is you get your money back, but you find out reasonably quickly whether or not they're going to perform, and there's never any confusion about whether or not the transaction has completed.

So a big part of this problem is that StubHub is letting sellers cheat buyers out of massive appreciation by not giving them a reasonably deadline for delivery, nor penalizing the sellers for failing to perform.

The potential costs to correct the situation don't have to be an issue, because StubHub could conceivably push those costs onto the seller trying (and in this case apparently succeeding!) to cheat the system. They could write their seller contract to state that the seller is responsible for all costs borne by StubHub acquiring replacement tickets, and that would remove their incentive to pull stunts like this.

Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#73

Post by slg »

mbcrower wrote: post #66
curun1r wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The buyer made the mistake of thinking he was dealing with StubHub rather than the seller. If he had been smart, he would have asked asked StubHub for the seller's details with the comment that he would be filing suit against either StubHub or the seller. StubHub is a marketplace and sellers frequently sell tickets they don't own. This works out because tickets frequently drop in price shortly before the game and, fo…

Based on the customer service emails it looks like StubHub knew full well what was going on and aided the seller in pulling out of the agreement.

Sellers are a much smaller group and more in demand commodity than buyers. I would venture a guess that sites like Stubhub will generally favor the seller over the buyer in any dispute. That is the basis of this policy and exactly what happened in this instance.

Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#74

Post by GigabyteCoin »

mbcrower wrote: post #66
curun1r wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The buyer made the mistake of thinking he was dealing with StubHub rather than the seller. If he had been smart, he would have asked asked StubHub for the seller's details with the comment that he would be filing suit against either StubHub or the seller. StubHub is a marketplace and sellers frequently sell tickets they don't own. This works out because tickets frequently drop in price shortly before the game and, fo…

Based on the customer service emails it looks like StubHub knew full well what was going on and aided the seller in pulling out of the agreement.

Of course they knew what was going on. A seller "made a mistake" in listing the tickets, thus the tickets didn't actually exist in StubHub's eyes and they were forced to cancel the transaction.

It is impossible to know if the seller is telling the truth in this situation or not. Everybody makes mistakes, this seller just claims to have made a more costly one than usual.

StubHub is a marketplace, they can't investigate every time somebody claims to have made a mistake in listing their tickets.

IF the seller re-listed the exact same seats for a higher price once the original order was cancelled, I could see how StubHub could easily call out the fraudster and ban them from using their site... but even then the seller could just sign up using another credit card and a friend's address.

Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#75

Post by dbot »

curun1r wrote: post #65
mikeash wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just ridiculous. Nobody reads user agreements, everybody knows nobody reads user agreements, and pretty much everybody expects that if you purchase something through a company, that company is responsible for delivering. You can't reasonably set up a marketplace, be the middleman for buying and selling, then throw up your hands and say "sucks to be you" when the product you advertise doesn't get delivered to b…

The buyer made the mistake of thinking he was dealing with StubHub rather than the seller. If he had been smart, he would have asked asked StubHub for the seller's details with the comment that he would be filing suit against either StubHub or the seller. StubHub is a marketplace and sellers frequently sell tickets they don't own. This works out because tickets frequently drop in price shortly before the game and, fo…

Exactly - he should have demanded the seller's contact details so he could file a lawsuit. Per the Stubhub's TOS: "When placing an order, you are entering into a binding contract with the Seller to purchase those tickets...When a Buyer accepts your offer by purchasing your ticket through our Site or Services, you are contractually bound to deliver that exact ticket for the specified price and within the required delivery timeframe."

Given the way Stubhub handled the situation, you could probably include StubHub on a count of tortious interference with a contract. (They proactively cancelled the order.) That would get their attention.

Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#76

Post by eli »

mbcrower wrote: post #66
curun1r wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The buyer made the mistake of thinking he was dealing with StubHub rather than the seller. If he had been smart, he would have asked asked StubHub for the seller's details with the comment that he would be filing suit against either StubHub or the seller. StubHub is a marketplace and sellers frequently sell tickets they don't own. This works out because tickets frequently drop in price shortly before the game and, fo…

Based on the customer service emails it looks like StubHub knew full well what was going on and aided the seller in pulling out of the agreement.

I'm not sure if StubHub could force somebody to sell tickets they no longer want to sell if they wanted to.

Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#77

Post by mikeash »

kedean wrote: post #70
mikeash wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need to send them to SH? It would go like: buyer pays, seller gives buyer tickets. "Give" may mean mailing physical tickets, or an electronic transfer. It sounds like there are some ticket issuers which make this impossible, but I don't see how giving tickets to SH makes any difference.

Because someone needs to hold them in escrow, otherwise it's a 'he said she said' argument. How would SH know whether or not the seller actually withheld the tickets, if they've never seen proof that the tickets even exist? That or they just assume the buyer is always right and take a hit.

You're right, for paper tickets there needs to be a trusted third party that handles them. There's no need to send the tickets in advance, but once the sale occurs, you'd really have to send them through StubHub or another third party.

I see no reason StubHub couldn't do this, of course. They could even spin it as a feature: the seller never learns your address and your privacy is protected!

For electronic tickets, whatever service sells the ticket could act as the trusted third party. Get the seller to provide whatever confirmation/order/transfer numbers are appropriate and check them with the ticket issuer's system.

Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#78

Post by 6stringmerc »

whack wrote: post #10

To be fair, the very first section of the StubHub user agreement warns about this scenario: "1. Using StubHub Ticket Marketplace. StubHub is a marketplace that allows users to buy ("Buyers") and sell ("Sellers") tickets, related passes and merchandise or other goods (collectively, the "tickets") for events. As a marketplace, StubHub does not own the tickets on the Site nor does it set prices for tickets. Because sell…

If you read the fine print on the Seller's TOC regarding a "dropped sale" the only reason that such a situation is permitted is because the seller "cannot" furnish the tickets.

In my reasoning, being unwilling (i.e. "will not") to fulfill a transaction is entirely different than being unable to fulfill a transaction (i.e. "can not") and I'd hope that pounding StubHub and the seller would be a really easy avenue for a skilled lawyer. If this has happened before, and for large sums of money, I'd be curious if there's enough people interested to make it a class action.

Remember, if you can buy through the venue, buy through the venue.

Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#79

Post by mikeash »

eli wrote: post #76
mbcrower wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the customer service emails it looks like StubHub knew full well what was going on and aided the seller in pulling out of the agreement.

I'm not sure if StubHub could force somebody to sell tickets they no longer want to sell if they wanted to.

The tickets were already sold. What would be forced here would be delivery of what was sold.

They can't exactly force that either, but they should be able to force penalties or restitution if they fail to perform.

Re: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

#80

Post by eli »

bradleyjg wrote: post #64
hotgoldminer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SH has no mechanism to ensure delivery of the ticket. The seller holds the ticket, so how can SH compel them to hand it over - short of not releasing the buyer's payment to the seller. Short being the operative word. SH is running a speculative marketplace against n% insurance fee on unfulfilled sales.

Does Stubhub release the sellers information to the buyer? It looks to me like the buyer has a claim in contract against the seller for $5100. That's within the small claim limit in California.

IANAL, but I think you'd have a hard time convincing a judge of that math.
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