The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

More severe penalties for reneging would seem to make sense too. This could potentially be problematic in cases of scalping (e.g., the seller scalps a ticket right before someone else makes a purchase on SH), but this is simply another case where digital transfer of ownership would make way more sense. If SH could see a ticket had changed hands, they could immediately pull it from their site.

Hence my 1st takeaway:

"StubHub should be more transparent about the seller-side risks involved when "selling tickets" to customers"

I would claim I had legal possession of the tickets due to the fact the seller had accepted my money, and that when the value appreciated, that was therefore my value, not theirs, and that ~$5000 was stolen from me.

I won't guarantee victory because of course I can't, but this strikes me as a fairly basic argument about possession suitable for a small-claims court, not a bizarre legal theory.

By contrast, had I merely "reserved" the tickets but no money transfer had occurred, in a transaction clearly labeled as a "reservation subject to cancellation", I'd expect the court to tell me to go pound sand and that I was lucky to get coupons in that value. But buying a ticket on StubHub looks and feels like a purchase, not a reservation subject to arbitrary cancellation. StubHub's terminology is all about "Buy" and "Sell" on their website, not "Reserve". (Just checked to be sure.)

I'm a season ticket holder for an NBA team that runs its own secondary market for tickets. I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, I can't use services like StubHub to list my tickets for sale because the tickets are locked down into the secondary market account. On the other hand, I've never seen crap like this happen on there.

I was lucky/smart enough to list all the games I couldn't attend at multiples of face value and adjust the price as the game dates come closer. This worked out well with my tickets to the game against the Lakers because they sold pretty quickly after Kobe's announcement. I definitely didn't get full market value for them, but people were getting their tickets poached at far less because they set them for a pre-retirement announcement value. Since the Lakers stink and it was a weekday game, that value was probably below face value.

But with the market we're forced to use, you can't take your tickets back, which is clearly a good thing.

They also have the following policy for sellers:

"If your tickets have sold but you cannot fulfill the order (also referred to as 'dropping a sale' or a 'dropped sale'), StubHub may charge your payment method an amount equal to 20% of the price of the ticket sold to compensate us for the losses we incur to meet our obligations under the FanProtectTM Guarantee. In some cases involving dropped sales that result in unusually large losses to StubHub (for example, dropped sales involving large numbers of tickets or tickets with significant price appreciation), however, StubHub reserves the right in its sole discretion to charge your payment method the full amount of the replacement costs StubHub incurs under the FanProtectTM Guarantee (including costs in excess of 20% of the ticket price)."

They have given themselves the ability to make this right and go after the seller for the costs of it, but they are choosing not to, screwing the buyer instead. They will of course happily pocket this 20% fee and the additional higher fees on the eventual sale of the tickets at the higher price, whether on this account or another (if the seller is banned).

"2. Buyers should be more aware of the fact that Stubhub is only a marketplace, and they are really at the mercy of the seller."

Why should buyers be aware of this when Stubhub advertises a "FanProtectTM Guarantee"?! Stubhub shouldn't be advertising one thing on nearly every page of their website and then disclaiming in their TOS.

Also, Stubhub has come out to say that they'll get this guy to the game. No mention of changing policy to make sure it doesn't happen again though.

https://twitter.com/StubHub/status/684906796813697024?