I hate Stub Hub (A cautionary tale)

moses-i

Sorry if this should maybe be in a different forum but I figure it is music related.

Last May, I decided to buy tickets for the Who at the ACC on Stub Hub (there were still decent seats available on TM but I decided to pay a little extra for some better seats). As many of you are probably aware, the show was postponed. The new date didn't work for me so I looked into getting a refund. Stub Hub doesn't do refunds for rescheduled events so they told me the best I could do was to resell the tickets. I explained to them that the value of my tickets had dropped now that many people had cancelled their orders and flooded the market with better tickets that were previously unavailable at the time of my initial purchase. As such I told them that I would basically take a loss on tickets I didn't want and had never any intention of profiting from. They "graciously" waived their commission and somehow I was able to sell the tickets anyway (still at a loss of about 20 USD). It was then that i realized that I would not get my money back until I sent my tickets to my buyer. I had not yet received my tickets so I waited patiently until the delivery date of October 16 so that I could send them off and finally get my "refund". In the meantime, the entire tour was postponed yet again, pushing my date back to April.

When the delivery date came and went and I was without tickets, I asked for a refund from Stub Hub on the grounds that they had not delivered my tickets on the date promised. Long story short they said that I would get my tickets in April even though at this moment I could go on my account page and it will still list the tickets as arriving on Oct 16! After more back and forth with them, I suggested that they refund me and send the tickets directly to my buyer (thereby cutting out ONE middle man). They said no but that magically my buyer has the option of cancelling the order which would result in a full refund to me (interestingly I was never offered the opportunity to cancel my order). So now I have to wait more than a year to get SOME of my money back for tickets I don't even want. Meanwhile the SCALPER I bought them off of will make a nice little profit as will Stub Hub. Oh the best part is that they said that they can't give me a refund because they don't own the tickets and all they are is a marketplace, yet they CAN hold onto my $380 USD as well as my buyer's $360 USD in the mean time.

Long story short...lesson learned, IF I ever buy tickets from scalpers ever again, I will just stick with the good ol' honest street scalper/

darthvedder

That sucks. If you put the tickets on your credit card, you could call your bank and dispute the charge.

crowes74

I've been holding on to Who tickets since May. They are some real nice seats or I'd had cancelled already. Still may once I see a review or two from next years shows.

Sorry for your trouble with stub hub, that just sucks.

moses-i

darthvedder said:

That sucks. If you put the tickets on your credit card, you could call your bank and dispute the charge.

Yeah I went that route and the cc company said that technically because of stub hub's policy and the fact that I will eventually get my money, I have no case. Not happy with them either, this is the second time I have disputed a ticket related charge and they didn't come through (the first was when Neil Young cancelled his headlining slot at The Harvest Picnic and i ended up eating like 200 bucks). I will probably tell the cc company that I'm not happy with their "protection" and switch to another one.

Eh.

moses-i

crowes74 said:

I've been holding on to Who tickets since May. They are some real nice seats or I'd had cancelled already. Still may once I see a review or two from next years shows.

Sorry for your trouble with stub hub, that just sucks.

Do you have them in hand? Are they hard tickets? Because one of the reasons stub hub is getting away with this BS is that they are saying that the original seller never got his tickets yet because this type of event doesn't have tickets printed out until 3 weeks before the event date. They are saying that because of the postponement, my tickets technically don't exist.

crowes74

Yes, ordered about a week before first cancelled show. Was originally held at will call, but they ended up sending them in mail after the first cancelation. $300+ is usually much more than I'd spend but the wife and I both really dig the Who. But like I said, we are still on the fence about cancelling. she was really looking forward to seeing Joan Jett in the openers slot. Know a fella kinda in the same boat as you over scalped tickets for the show. He's just outta luck because it was second hand seller he got tickets from. I assume if it's cancelled he'll lose all his invested cash in those tickets.

I do wonder how long I have to cancel them, doubt they would appreciate me canceling a few days before the show. I know I didn't like it when the cancelled on 2 or 3 days notice after I'd already missed work in May.

Suziemay

crowes74 said:

Yes, ordered about a week before first cancelled show. Was originally held at will call, but they ended up sending them in mail after the first cancelation. $300+ is usually much more than I'd spend but the wife and I both really dig the Who. But like I said, we are still on the fence about cancelling. she was really looking forward to seeing Joan Jett in the openers slot. Know a fella kinda in the same boat as you over scalped tickets for the show. He's just outta luck because it was second hand seller he got tickets from. I assume if it's cancelled he'll lose all his invested cash in those tickets.

I do wonder how long I have to cancel them, doubt they would appreciate me canceling a few days before the show. I know I didn't like it when the cancelled on 2 or 3 days notice after I'd already missed work in May.

I thought they typically give you a deadline to get a refund in the event a show is postponed. You should check the email you got when they announced the show was postponed to confirm.

2-feign-reluctance

Never had a problem when I've used them.