Is StubHub's Website Deceiving Users?
jordancolburn.com
jordancolburn.com
This is just like when you go to an electronics store and they put the super expensive tv (almost) nobody buys right next to the still very expensive but comparably more modest model. You are more likely to buy that second tv even if costs more than you initially budgeted because your brain tells you that this is the cheaper model with _almost_ the same features as the flagship tv.
For another example, many ecommerce sites will list the number available in stock if it is low, and sometimes will just say "few available" without specifying a number. This creates the same (sometimes false) sense of urgency.
Thanks for reading btw, and thanks to whoever posted it here.
"Hey Joe we just sold another one of the <insert TV you happen to be looking at>. That's the 3rd one today - we better order some more before we run out of stock"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/08/1...
I disagree that these are equivalent.
Product differentiation exists in part to ensure you leave no money on the table -- if someone is cashed up and wants to pay 50% more for an extra 2 inches on the screen size, then you let them. Conversely, for the people who are super price conscious you have the very low margin end of line product hidden at the back. You alway maximise price by ensuring you have what they want at a price they're willing to pay. Generally this is fair and works well for consumers.
But here we have prices that you _cannot_ pay. It's a dark pattern akin to bait and switch techniques that should (and might) be illegal.
I'm not sure this is fair.
By displaying false information, they are point-blank lying. That's misinformation. It should be illegal - it could be.
Some other tricks such as 'creating very expensive items which they never expect to sell' as a cognitive 'price anchor' - well, not quite the same thing.
I suggest there is a distinction between falsehoods and other forms of tricks.
In the end it probably doesn't matter, but I wouldn't mind one bit if there was some consumer protections concerning this.
As a devil's advocate, despite the presentation being scummy, there's definite consumer value to seeing tickets that sold. It helps correct an information imbalance between sellers and buyers. If all you saw were available tickets, you'd have no way of knowing whether they were being priced above market or not. By showing you two sales, provided they're actually real sales and picked arbitrarily (i.e. not picking the most expensive sales), they're giving you information about what other buyers are willing to pay for tickets. It's like seeing real estate comps...sure the houses have already been sold, but it helps you get a feel for whether the one you're looking at is being sold for a fair price.
I don't think you're playing the devil's advocate.
By all means - they and and as you indicate - maybe should show recent tickets sold. That's valuable information.
But what they are showing is made up data. Not good. And definitely 'anti valuable'.
They are going out of their way to insert previously sold tickets at the top of searches to make things look busy. I never timed how long it could be from sale to "simulated sale" but there were a few that stuck around for probably 10 min (guesstimate, but it was long enough to grab my coworkers and discuss and look at the code and refresh a number of times).
"Another commonly used form of bargain advertising is to offer goods at prices lower than those being charged by others for the same merchandise in the advertiser's trade area (the area in which he does business). This may be done either on a temporary or a permanent basis, but in either case the advertised higher price must be based upon fact, and not be fictitious or misleading."
It'd be like seeing a line for a new video game system, and everyone in the line was paid to be there and won't be buying it.
I don't think it is a good example. It is often a real technical limitation - they aren't able to keep consistent inventory count between branches, warehouses and internet sites. Other reason for "few available" is some form of dropshipping - they don't really have any items.
“4 people are looking at this room now”
“2 people just booked at this hotel”
“Too bad you already missed out on this hot deal”
“X% of the neighbourhood/city/region you’re looking at is already booked!”
...
It’s quite likely real information, but the timeframes and language are vague enough to make you feel like you’ve got about 5 minutes to lock a room down. They do such a good job at instilling anxiety that you feel like you achieved something important when you finally book.
In reality it's somebody booked the hotel, at some point in the past X (minutes? hours? days?), for some dates in the future that more than likely have nothing to do with when you plan on being there.
I was half-jokingly going to ask for tickets to the game, lol. But after they requested I post an update and clarify their response to removing the feature, it just felt wrong. I mean, I'm glad they removed it, but that's a pretty big thing to act like it should all just be OK and it's a "feature" users didn't like. And I think their urgency in removing it only shows how bad it really was, not how concerned they are for users.
Well, that only really shows how bad it might be or was being perceived and whatever backlash it might generate. It's entirely possible to feel like you have to backpedal on something that was meant entirely for the good of others because it's perceived as self serving (not that this situation maps to that, I'm making a general point).
1. There must be a representation, omission, or practice that misleads or is likely to mislead the consumer.
2. The act or practice must be considered from the perspective of the reasonable consumer.
3. The representation, omission, or practice must be material.
The post suggests StubHub is making very specific misrepresentations about specific ticket rights; the tactic here would deceive a reasonable consumer; and the misrepresentation is made to induce the sale.
> When you load a page they get a list of tickets that have already sold
I'm sure they could argue that since they are real tickets are actually sold out then they're not actually being deceptive.
I really hate these dark patterns - been getting worse and worse on travel sites.
If the ticket was already sold, why the delay? A reasonable consumer think that specific ticket had just been sold at that moment, which sounds like a material misrepresentation.
4. The FTC must give a darn to the point that it actually wants to spend money prosecuting.
In all seriousness, I love how techniques like this are "ok" when the company is considered a "startup", but when it suddenly becomes "evil megacorp", it's all of the sudden considered deception.
More relevant to my comment, I am not familiar with public sentiment of Wish.
Keep in mind that YC invested in a startup that was running a service that added malware to software installers and when people called them out on it Paul Graham defended it and said they were doing nothing wrong because there was a tiny "pwn my machine" checkbox in the installer, and if people didn't uncheck that then clearly they wanted a load of malware installed.
I've been writing comments about this kind of thing on HN for years. This one was 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7051099
It works, and it is REAL unlike the javascript you see here, but it is still stupid.
Can you imagine going to a Donut shop in the morning that had just sold 10% of its daily inventory and them putting up a SOLD OUT sign for Tier 1 Early Bird donuts?
I hope one day marketers find a better solution for generating interest in their products.
It's the dishonesty that kills me. The reason I think I was bugged enough to look into it is that I fell for the trick. I knew it's going to be a sold out game, so I assumed it was real traffic/user actions and almost let that influence my purchasing decisions.
we got into the OU/OSU game in Columbus for less than face
i've only paid appreciably more than face once, and that was when OU played Florida in Miami for the national championship in 2009
i don't have hard numbers, but i've done this over fifty times in the last 10+ years, both coasts, bowl games, etc... mostly college football, but a couple NFL games as well.
there have even been a few times where i was nervous and bought tickets beforehand because it was a big game, and then regretted it when i got there and found cheaper better seats than what i could get beforehand.
i worry that sites like stubhub could stifle availability at games if more people try to just sell online instead of taking them to the stadium
hasn't seemed to have been an issue yet though.
i'm afraid the venues could make more tickets non-transferable and force you into stubhub so they could get a cut of the secondary market, it could actually make it more expensive to get tickets in the end for average events, low end tickets anyway
Also, since the ticket cartel is also a scalper, they get a cut of the resale action as well!
If you give someone a put option for some quantity on something, they then get the power to sell that amount of that something to you at a specific price. Usually, you want to get money in exchange for giving someone that power. In the markets, this is called selling someone a put option.
This chap's point is that you could agree to buy a ticket for $150 to see Kobe Bryant on Stubhub. This doesn't mean you get a ticket. This just means you gave someone on Stubhub the option to sell you a ticket at $150 because if the price rises to $1500, he's going to choose not to sell you that ticket by doing what the seller did in the previous case. Since you get no money for giving the seller the power, you're not selling the option, you're giving it away for free.
That's probably the context to his comment. I neither agree nor disagree with it.
Bought Chris Rock tickets a long time ago with the impression that they didn't have any special terms on them. Nothing unusual in the terms. The ticket was a standard Ticketmaster ticket. Showed up to the Chicago Theather this weekend and they were forcing people to put their phones in a locked bag. I didn't agree to those terms, so I refused. I got denied entry.
(Btw Talked with ticketmaster support about this and they said this was an venue issue, the event didn't have any special terms attached)
While somewhat deceiving, it's not as bad as marking tickets that haven't sold as sold. Imagine if you were trying to sell your tix at the last minute, well that would be bad. (I've sold tix at the last minute before and that would scare me.)
I also came across them displaying say only 4 tickets for what it seems like a sold out event but in reality it was never sold out and the prices were cheaper on the day of the actual event.
I recall seeing something along the lines of the event being almost sold out.
Maybe Stubhub only had 4 tickets during that time so I could be wrong. It is a sale from ticket holder to ticket holder.
I suspect either "outcompeted" or "only required until you've crushed all of the competition who might use it to outcompete you". Neither is a particularly cheering thought.
Have you considered that SH.mbox.justSoldEvent might be noting that there were recent sales, and while they weren't just sold as the page was loaded, the system may actually indicate that sales are happening and to be aware that the listings may not persist in the current state for long?
As of right now, SH.mbox.justSoldEvent is undefined for me, but they may have specifically disabled the system (or only use it if there are sales but not too many). Looking at the seller's interface on SH for this, the last three transactions happened within 10 minutes of when I loaded the sales data, and each were for a pair. Looking at the sales data I can see that the two you had shown to you were consecutive transactions at 2017-09-11T17:45:40.000Z and 2017-09-11T17:38:55.000Z, which I'm willing to bet were the two most recent sales when you loaded the page.
If that's what's going on, it's not only for SH's benefit. This also signals to buyers what's selling right now, and what migh be sold soon in case you are eyeing a particular listing but are holding off for some reason. If similar things have sold recently, maybe that set won't still be there if you wait a few minutes. This isn't necessarily simulated demand, but real demand, the same as if you were in a store and watching a particular item fly off the shelves. If the stock is depleted, you might not be able to get one, so knowing people are buying them might influence whether you feel secure in waiting for a bit or not.
(For what it's worth, I do not work for nor have ever worked for StubHub, but I do work in the event ticketing industry so are familiar with them and how to use them).
So, why don't the sold tickets follow the sorting rules, they are inserted at the top. And why is it limited just to 2 of these unsorted previously sold items at the top and not just mark them in their place on the list if they have since sold. It seems pretty clear to me that it was designed to create a sense of urgency to the user. Another user on reddit also reported that they saw items that did not match their filters at all but were somehow inserted on their list.
I am 100% open to the fact that poking around for 20 min or so might not lead me to a complete understanding of their system, but the intent of this code seemed pretty clear to me and I was able to continually able to bring up already sold tickets.
Well, those sales were almost 7 minutes apart. I just looked, and the next sale was at 2017-09-11T17:59:24.000Z, so almost 15 minutes later.
> And why is it limited just to 2 of these unsorted previously sold items at the top and not just mark them in their place on the list if they have since sold.
Stubhub lets you limit the shown tickets to specific zones, sections, price ranges, quantities, etc. There's no guarantee that the latest sales would be visible in your normal display. That said, if they really wanted to deceive people and make them think there was a sense of urgency when there wasn't, they could search through all the prior transactions for this event (~ 100 so far in the last 24 hours) for items that more closely matched the price and/or section and/or row to make you think that what you're looking at right then is what's selling, even if the transactions were from hours ago. Limiting themselves to what I think are likely the two most recent transactions and being completely transaparent about the section, row and prices the were sold at is fairly straightforward if you ask me (and more than you'll get on some primary markets, such as TicketMaster, where promoters will withhold large chunks of inventory to make the event look more sold out than it is, only to release them closer to the event date).
> It seems pretty clear to me that it was designed to create a sense of urgency to the user.
Sure, but what they're trading for that is real market information, which is useful for the user as well. It's a trade, not necessarily a deception or manipulation.
> Another user on reddit also reported that they saw items that did not match their filters at all but were somehow inserted on their list.
So here's a question, say you're Stubhub and you want to indicate the last two sales, so users know what's selling and to hopefully influence them to buy now. You don't want to show all sales, that's proprietary information, and only a certain amount of history is even provided to those people with accounts selling for that event. How do you integrate that into the page display in a way that is noticeable, doesn't detract from other useful elements to much (such as a designated section when there aren't any recent sales, which could possibly be used for more room to show the map or listings), and can easily be added/removed as needed?
I think given those constraints, which I think are likely and not very extreme, the method they chose is a fairly natural choice, even if it doesn't make everyone happy.
> but the intent of this code seemed pretty clear to me and I was able to continually able to bring up already sold tickets.
Careful with attributing intent, or thinking you completely understand all the implications of that intent. There's a lot that goes into something like that and sitting down with someone responsible for it and understanding their position, thoughts and reasoning might change your opinion on the matter even if the intent is the exact same. Imperfect knowledge of complex systems leads to imperfect understanding actions within that system. We have different opinions on what is going on here, but that might just be because one or both of us is missing information that the other has about how the system functions as a whole. I, for one, see this almost entirely in a positive light, now that I believe I understand some of the details of how it functions. It's not fake data being presented, and it doesn't seem to be cherry picked to create incorrect assumptions in the buyer. I think it's the most recently sold items, and while the signalling isn't perfect, I would much rather have that data available than not.
1. The sales stop showing after the first load and the values are saved in application storage. Why would they hide them if they are so valuable to the user. My guess is that users would be annoyed to constantly see these values and the users would catch on that they are only "recent" and not "realtime" sales
2. Why are the recent sales randomized in their location on the list. If it is such valuable info, why are they not placed at the top every time. Again, b/c users would ignore them and quickly learn they are not real-time sales.
3. If it so valuable to users, why not present it in a special location such as its own list. Why would useful pricing data be randomly put into the top of the list. Again, users don't really care so much about what recently sold as much unless it affects what is available now.
4. As SH, you have the option to show people recent sales, or how many tickets that are left. But to only show two recent sales and do it in a way that blends with other tickets is a deliberate choice to manipulate the user in a way that does not coincide with their expectation that those tickets shown to them on load where available when the page was loaded.
Basically, this "feature" was a combination of many design decisions and all of them lean toward cues to the user that these items are "real time" sales that just happened since we loaded the page, and away from helping the user realize the true nature of these sales. And of course it is done in a way that benefits stub hub and not the consumer, which is upsetting from a place that presents itself as a "marketplace", since users expect transparency from them (the price you list is the price, what I am told is available is available).
It would be deceiving if they showed an artificially falling stock counter or something to that effect, but in reality they are showing actual true data, it is only the way in which they show it (randomly inserted amongst search results) that can cause a sense of urgency, but there is still no deception here.
But this sort of false urgency is misleading and should be illegal.
Blegh.
StubHub is widely, widely known to anyone who attends music events or sporting events. It's the largest exchange by a lot. They don't need bad publicity to spread the word.
It works like this: You walk in, interested in buying. You talk with the salesman, settle on a car but are having cold feet/want to talk it over with your spouse, etc. Just as you're about to "walk away", an employee dressed down to appear as a customer, swoops in and makes a "cash offer" on the car you were interested in. Haggling ensues with the other guy protesting that "you weren't going to buy it, so I want it!" and you reluctantly put a down payment on it to keep it from being stolen out from under you (good old loss aversion at its finest).
Alternatives to this include having an appliance/couch that is not ridiculously, but significantly marked down from its street price that the salesman is convincing you to buy. Your sales guy talks about what a great unit it is and its great price and you're ready to pay and take it home when he springs on you that the "Sold" sign fell off the unit and conveniently slid underneath it. Not to worry, of course, because there's just as good of a deal on the upgrade and even though it's a few hundred more, he'll knock the same hundred or so off of that price that the other was marked down, so it'll cost more, but it's a better unit[1].
Of course, the more expensive unit isn't -- really -- more expensive, or better than the one you were looking at, it's just marked at a price they can actually sell it for and make money. The other one wasn't even for sale in the first place, it's a prop. This is exceptionally common at middle-class furniture stores where the prices listed on everything are MSRP and the product never sells for that price with even the lowest-on-the-rung sales guys having a percentage on the price that they're allowed to discount without approval[2]. It gives the salespeople the lee-way to make you feel like you're getting a good deal and pull stunts like this to up their commission/the stores profits. When I worked retail (not commission), this was a common practice and that "more expensive item" often had a bonus attached to it for the salesperson (sometimes money, sometimes free stuff).
It's interesting to see some of this playing out in the digital world, which basically eliminated a lot of these practices because you can instantly compare pricing/products among many sellers/stores, but there'll always be ways to play at the weaknesses of the buyer.
[0] Which I thought was a clearly defined illegal practice, like "bait and switch" is known to be. But might not be (though as some have mentioned, the FTC might have an opinion on the subject).
[1] ...and this is basically a form of bait and switch, but it's a lot easier to get away with and falls into a grayer area depending on the jurisdiction (usually a product that isn't available has to be advertised at a great price where upon arrival to purchase the product, an alternative, higher-profit item is peddled with the company having never had any intention of selling the cheap product).
[2] Though a really common way of convincing a customer that they're getting a great deal is to bring that manager in to do the ceremony of granting a discount even though the sales guy could have done it himself. "Since it was my fault in trying to sell you something that was already sold, I'll explain that to the GM and see if we can give you a bigger discount for the cock-up."