The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan
theleadsports.com
theleadsports.com
I think Stubhub has non-delivery penalties, but probably not enough to cancel out this windfall.
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 which case they either need to forbid reselling such tickets, or have massive penalties for breaking the contract.
I'm not sure how this is logistically possible without the seller sending SH tickets when he or she wants to sell them, in which case we'd just be reading an article about how SH accidentally sent out $6k in tickets that were never paid for.
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.
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.
You're right, for paper tickets there needs to
be a trusted third party that handles them
For events that Stubhub lacks hooks into the ticketing system (mostly baseball), they do nothing to vet tickets. Buyers are advised to create a listing in TicketExchange (or whomever is the official marketplace) to (1) validate the tickets and (2) lock them to prevent forwarding or TicketExchange sale by a prior holder.
I imagine for some events there is this entire chain of sell/buy/sell/buy going on.
Or, try to. Stubhub actually has a huge fraud exposure. The seller is paid within days of the buyer receiving the tickets, even if the event is much later.
If the tickets were counterfeit in the first place, or invalidated later, Stubhub can only hope that the credit card the seller signed up with is still valid... or ever was. Meanwhile, the buyer gets a refund (eventually) or a substitute (if prices have dropped).
StubHub fully supports digital tickets that are immediately delivered upon purchase. They should, IMHO, require this when it's available.
Obviously they could try a cause of action for lost opportunity to profit from the transaction from legal standpoint, but it's much harder to claim losses from hypothetical things that never happened than to unwind an actual transaction.
What if Kobe was injured and the price of the tickets plummeted for example? It's a stretch to argue that the buyer lost something tangible by relying on the sellers performance of the contract.
The standard measure of damages in contract is expectancy, that is the breaching party has to put the non-breaching party in as good a position as he would have been had he not breached.
Had the seller not breached the buyer would have had tickets with a fair market value of $6000 (at the time of breach) and been out the $900 he paid for the tickets. After the breach the buyer got back the $900, but is still $5100 worse off than if the seller had fulfilled his part of the bargain. Those are the expectancy damages he suffered.
Given that going to this specific game is a unique experience that can't be duplicated a court could order specific performance (i.e. that the tickets be handed over) as tacon suggests below. But: 1) I don't think small claims courts can order specific performance, 2) you probably couldn't get before a small claims court judge in time, and 3) if the seller didn't actually have the ticket then he couldn't be ordered to turn it over. So monetary damages are more likely.
I guess I don't really follow why the buyer is entitled to appreciation on something that was never in their possession.
If the tickets had instead declined in value before the seller backed out then wouldn't the buyer still get back all their money? I assume it would be unacceptable to refund them just the then-current FMV, so why is it different when the tickets appreciate in value?
The buyer owns the tickets from the moment the purchase is complete, whether or not he has received them.
If the tickets went down in value in the interim time, then the most expedient thing for the seller to do to cure the problem would be to buy new tickets at the now-reduced price and hand them over to the buyer. You are absolutely right, the buyer can't demand his money back if the tickets go down in value -- he has to accept tickets that are fundamentally the same in value as the ones he was supposed to get.
Now, if for whatever reason the seller couldn't replace the tickets even though the price has dropped (unlikely -- that's pretty much the definition of a price, is that the item is available in exchange for money), then he might be able to ask for his money back instead.
On the other hand, listing a product for fair market value and then cancelling when the market value skyrockets after the sale is not at all reasonable behavior. I assume there's some part of contract law that covers this sort of thing (since a sale is a form of contract).
Sure they do, just don't release funds until the tracking number shows the tickets have been delivered or the PDF has been uploaded.
But having a ticket doesn't mean that it will be valid at the gate... or was ever valid.
"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 sellers set ticket prices, they may be higher than face value.
While StubHub may provide pricing, shipping, listing and other guidance in our Services, such guidance is solely informational and you may decide to follow it or not. Also, while we may help facilitate the resolution of disputes and provide the FanProtect Guarantee, StubHub has no control over and does not guarantee the existence, quality, safety or legality of the items advertised; the truth or accuracy of the user's content or listings; the ability of Sellers to sell tickets or Buyers to pay for them; or that a Buyer or Seller will complete a transaction."
The takeaway from this seems to be that:
1. StubHub should be more transparent about the seller-side risks involved when "selling tickets" to customers.
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.
3. Given StubHub's policy above, anyone who wants a guaranteed ticket should never ever use StubHub.
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 buyers.
This might be legal, but it is completely nuts, and the existence of a "we're completely nuts" clause in the user agreement doesn't mitigate that.
"StubHub should be more transparent about the seller-side risks involved when "selling tickets" to customers"
I don't need to reed any user agreement to know that. And Stubhub is clearly a marketplace. I would assume this site is just the same as eBay or Airbnb. I know that are some responsibilities of a marketplace, but I also know that I'm ultimately trusting the other transaction part (not the marketplace).
If I think this risk is too high, I don't use a marketplace (personally, I never bought anything through eBay or equivalents myself precisely because of this).
The old Stubhub (pre-eBay) made a BIG deal of denied-at-door situations, and local managers had broad discretion to source replacement tickets, even at higher cost.
Nowadays, they realize that doing so is not profitable in the short term.
Next thing you know, people are going to start offering a lifetime guarantee that's only good for the lifetime of the product! ;)
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 customer service issues to solve, because the cost to correct the situation in the customer's eyes has no upper bound.
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.
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, for the times that they don't, sellers usually eat the loss. But this seller decided not to deliver and, for that, they should be sued. The equivalent in the stock market would be to short a stock and then not pay up when the stock quadrupled. Given that the value of the loss suffered by the buyer is roughly $5k ($6k tickets less ~$k credit at StubHub), it's a good candidate for small claims court.
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.
When the reason given for the 'mistake' is obviously false, it's not impossible.
>they can't investigate every time somebody claims to have made a mistake in listing their tickets
They certainly can investigate every case of purchases in the $900+ range. You know, as part of their multiple hundreds of dollars in fees.
The problem is that you could not concretely determine that to be the case. Thousands if not millions of ticket sales are canceled for a variety of reasons on StubHub every single day.
They would be going broke trying to investigate all of them for fraud, not to mention open themselves up to potential lawsuits by the alleged perpetrators they wrongly defamed if they made a mistake.
They can't exactly force that either, but they should be able to force penalties or restitution if they fail to perform.
does a seller profile appear next to the listing
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Jason Durbin · VP of Ticket Operations at Tickets For Less
Jesse Sandler – I’m the VP of Ticket Operations at Tickets For Less. We’ve reached out to TheLeadSports.com and are trying to contact you. We have four seats for you in section 106 for Kobe’s last home game. Please contact me or our President Dan Rouen at 913-685-3322.tldr, bought tickets for Superbowl, prices went up, order was cancelled, was refunded and given credit which would not cover the cost of the increased cost of tickets. Then repeated the same thing with another reseller.
Though in that case StubHub guaranteed the tixs:
"Instead, StubHub as of Saturday had spent $5 million on tickets to avoid defaulting on orders. StubHub policy guarantees that fans will get a ticket to the game if a seller can’t provide a ticket."
We ran a few blocks from Staples to the stubhub office and they just handed us comparable tickets. It was amazing. One of the nicest and best customer service interactions I have ever had.
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.
> Jason Durbin · VP of Ticket Operations at Tickets For Less
> Jesse Sandler – I’m the VP of Ticket Operations at
> Tickets For Less. We’ve reached out to
> TheLeadSports.com and are trying to contact you.
> We have four seats for you in section 106 for Kobe’s
> last home game. Please contact me or our President Dan
> Rouen at 913-685-3322.
> Like · Reply · 1228 · 23 hrs
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.)
That said, IANAL.
I realize that this is an idyllic notion, and that it is hard to organize boycotts in practice. But it does happen. Corporations react to public outrage more so than ever these days.
Of course that would increase costs and their responsibility, so it will never happen.
Paper tickets have some benefits, but there should be a way to void a paper ticket and convert it to a digital ticket that can be transferred electronically. Escrow costs would be a lot lower of SH is only escrowing digital ownership that can be transferred back to the seller if the tickets haven't sold.
For instance, in my market they partner with the Minnesota Twins. Twins tickets purchased through StubHub are "digitally delivered" just as you suggest: http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/ticketing/stubhub.jsp?c_id=mi...
On the other hand, the Minnesota Timberwolves have partnered with StubHub's competitor Flash Seats.
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.
If it was a season-ticket holder (genuine or 'bought for bulk discount at resale'), they'll only get them from the Lakers 4 days prior to the game anyway.
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 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.
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.
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.
I'm more of the mind that these things are so entrenched that neither fans or event planners have a choice.
They are the Amazon Web Services of the live event business. Sure, you will probably have a better experience if you use Backblaze for your storage, but AWS provides so many other services you might need that it makes sense to consolidate your business with them. That is why Ticketmaster is so entrenched. It isn't corruption. There is just a huge barrier to entry when your biggest competitor has such a complete product offering.
Disclaimer: Ex-Ticketmaster employee.
This doesn't quite hit it. Entertainers encourage it as they get paid to do so.
Ticketmaster is basically paid to be a bad guy. If you hate Ticketmaster, then all is working to plan.
Because what you're not doing is hating the actual decision maker on those fees -- the artist, the promoter, & the venue. Ticketmaster splits those fees. Ticketmaster wants to get paid of course, but the deal can be structure those fees any which way.
Want a low (or no) fees with Ticketmaster? If that's what the artist, promoter & venue want, that's what will happen.
Want a low ticket price for advertising & high fees to increase your profit? Ticketmaster can do that too.
At the end of the day, the artist & promoter own the tickets, not Ticketmaster.
It happens all the time with big events: tickets will appear on StubHub before they even go on sale to the general public. Speculators will gauge interests using StubHub for tickets they do not even own. If they make a StubHub purchase, they have time to find a cheaper ticker to cover the transaction.
The "when the guy owns the ticket" part is a question of title.
Let's take a gander at yon UCC, which covers these questions in most cases in most of the US.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-401
Blah blah blah blah. I'm too lazy to read all the stubhub fine print again, but last time i did, it said nothing. That means, in circumstances like these, title passes to buyer when physical delivery of goods occurs.
That's when the buyer owns the tickets.
The rest of the questions are pretty standard breach of contract and damages questions, which others seem to have covered.
Here, the buyer would definitely have recourse against the seller (but probably not against stubhub).
Of course, stubhub is being stupid in this case too, there are a variety of mechanisms it could use to prevent this from happening (escrow, charging sellers difference in current price vs old price if they reneg on tickets that have gone up more than, say, 100% in price, etc). Sadly, it looks like Stubhub also has a financial incentive to let this happen, since they make 20% of the price.
Though as is, I probably won't ever use StubHub if this is the case.
I don't see that there is any ticket-service that isn't shady in some way. I've only used a few, but they are usually pretty exclusive to the event, and they are all terrible.
So, for example, if this happens at a Super Bowl, you are still out all of your transportation, lodging, and other expenses.
Situations like this make it clear why it's in their interest not to do so.
When I sell my hockey tickets on stubhub, they place my tickets on hold with Tickets.com, and once sold, my physical tickets can no longer be used to gain entry to the event. The tickets that the buyer receives has a new barcode on them, so they can rest assured they won't have an issue at the gate.
Sure if the buyer booked a nonrefundable plane ticket in anticipation of going to the game, that would be something. Absent something like that, I'm not sure there's a case.
You buy a car from me. A -month- later I show up and say, "Yeah, sorry, I sold this car by accident, here's your money." and I take off with the car regardless of what you want to do, you have a case against me for theft.
Whether the buyer got his money back is irrelevant - that doesn't give the seller the retroactive ability to void the sale.