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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

#91

Post by michaelt »

strommen wrote: post #61
golergka wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the promise not to cancel orders that they received the payment for in the future?

How could they possibly make that promise? They don't own the tickets, and they're not really selling them. They're facilitating a transaction between two parties.

Well, in this case the order was "confirmed" then later StubHub claimed the tickets were "listed in error" which is an obvious lie. So for a start, they could start not obviously lying to their customers.

They could also add automatic sanity checking on listings, so sellers cannot accidentally list tickets at too low a price; and a manual offer acceptance stage in case the seller has chosen to list on multiple marketplaces.

They could also require that when a seller is selling a ticket, that the seller proves they actually have the ticket. If stubhub want to facilitate sellers engaging in speculation by selling tickets they don't own, they could clearly mark such listings, with the seller placing a security deposit so their obligations can be met even if the market moves substantially against them.

In the event a seller works around these protections (such as by submitting fake proof they have the ticket, or refusing to meet their obligations if the market price of a ticket they shorted exceeds their deposit) stubhub could take care of forcing the seller to meet their obligations.

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

#92

Post by kin »

He's getting 4 free ticket from Budweiser in section 112 and 4 free tickets in section 106 personally delivered by the CEO of Tickets For Less. Now, Stubhub has apologized and promised to get him to the game.

If I were him I'd deny the Stubhub tickets regardless of how good they are. Budweiser tickets are middle bottom level section (great view) while Tickets for Less are offering behind the backboard seats. Both are better than the original location he purchased.

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

#94

Post by mbcrower »

karzeem wrote: post #86
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.

They could charge sellers the greater of the purchase price or the market price of the ticket at the time of cancellation.

They could, but to business like StubHub each seller is probably more precious than each buyer. I'm not saying it's fair, but it's a lot easier for them to find new buyers than sellers.

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

#95

Post by brk »

Really this just shows how corrupt and broken the entire entertainment ticketing stack is.

TicketMaster, StubHub, etc., all prey on fans, and the fans ALLOW it by paying ridiculous fucking prices to attend events.

We're long past the days of needing an entity like Ticketmaster to be in the middle of ticket transactions. And we're long past the days of needing to worry about ticket scalping if we actually have an efficient ticketing system.

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

#96

Post by smt88 »

brk wrote: post #95

Really this just shows how corrupt and broken the entire entertainment ticketing stack is. TicketMaster, StubHub, etc., all prey on fans, and the fans ALLOW it by paying ridiculous fucking prices to attend events. We're long past the days of needing an entity like Ticketmaster to be in the middle of ticket transactions. And we're long past the days of needing to worry about ticket scalping if we actually have an effi…

> fans ALLOW it by paying ridiculous fucking prices to attend events

No, fans have no choice. Entertainers allow it by using Ticketmaster.

> We're long past the days of needing an entity like Ticketmaster to be in the middle of ticket transactions

The greatest fear an event planner has is that they'll plan the event and no one will show up. Ticketmaster aggressively markets the events they're selling tickets for, which is why event planners continue to use them.

Sure, you could use a homegrown solution or a smaller company, but Ticketmaster unethically adds all purchasers to a bunch of mailing lists and makes it really difficult to unsubscribe, and then they can claim "X million mailing list subscribers" to the event marketers.

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

#97

Post by mbcrower »

mikeash wrote: post #79
eli wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've never used StubHub. When you buy tickets, does a seller profile appear next to the listing, as in Amazon? If so, a cheap move by this seller should at least put a bad mark on the seller's public profile. That could benefit reputable sellers, though. Of course, anyone selling their first tickets on StubHub would be at a disadvantage because they'd have no reputation.

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

#99

Post by mbcrower »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #71

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 bu…

StubHub could easily look at the historic pricing data and the normal cancellation rates for tickets. If the cancellation rate is normally low, except for instances where the ticket price suddenly jumped, then any cancellations in that time frame would likely have a high probability of being fraudulent, especially if the same tickets were later relisted through the same sellers account.

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

#100

Post by FireBeyond »

mikeash wrote: post #20
morley wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes Ticketmaster takes a long while to print the tickets. So even if the seller has to send in the tickets as soon as possible (which is in fact the case), there's going to be some period where the transaction has occurred and the seller can't possibly send the tickets to the buyer. I think Stubhub has non-delivery penalties, but probably not enough to cancel out this windfall.

Sure, "some period" is fine. When you buy stuff on eBay, for example, your product might not even ship for a couple of days. In this case, though, it was a month later and they still hadn't been delivered. That's no longer reasonable. It's possible the ticket issuers won't issue tickets even in that timeframe. StubHub's web site has warnings that the tickets might not be available until 72 hours before the event. In…

For Lakers games and season ticket holders, TicketMaster doesn't 'e-print' the ticket until 96 hours before tip off, to try to minimize ticket resale (which it doesn't, or only marginally, because they're counting on people not being able to keep track of that - which StubHub helpfully does).
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