tl;dr it was the seller who screwed him over, not StubHub, but StubHub responded poorly and has policies that incentivize this behaviour when ticket prices go up by more than 20%.
Why be a market facilitator if you aren't going to make sure that buyers and sellers are being honest and fair with each other? That is what irritates me about this.
Because money. HN will likely play devils advocate but I agree with you. If you enter an arena, I believe you are partly responsible for what happens in that arena.
Morally, yes, they should be responsible. But StubHub only has an obligation to act legally, not morally. There should be laws in place to deal with this situation. Maybe there already are?
Agreed; this is probably already fraud between the seller and the buyer, ignoring StubHub's involvement already. It's unlikely we need any laws to "fix" this because the ones that have been around for centuries are probably already sufficient. Small-claims court may already be an available avenue of relief as in many states this would fit under the limit, though the internet can as always make jurisdiction a tricky issue: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-ho...
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.)
Likely they would, if the buyer sued the seller. The buyer has an invoice stating that the goods were sold to him, and the seller had received payment into their bank account. It's pretty clear that title of the tickets had transferred to the buyer, and that he would be entitled to the proceeds of any illicit sale of those tickets to another buyer.
I would like to offer the controversial response that we all have a responsibility to act morally, all the time. "It was legal" should never be an excuse.
The act of breaking each responsibility differs with regard to consequence. "It was legal" is a perfect legal excuse. But I agree that as consumers we should each voluntarily avoid doing business with immoral business entities. Better yet, we should denounce immoral actors and call public attention to their transgressions.
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.
The better question is why SH allows sellers to cancel complete orders where payment has already been taken. Frankly, it's ridiculous that the seller had any input a month after the order was marked as confirmed, and I can only assume that payment was taken if SH was willing to issue a nearly $1,000 credit.
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.
Why are they set up this way? The purchase should confer ownership at the time of purchase, or within a reasonable time afterwards, in such a way that it is physically impossible for the seller to take back ownership without the cooperation of the buyer.
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 which case they either need to forbid reselling such tickets, or have massive penalties for breaking the contract.
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).
Age old problem. It is why PayPal exists. Arbitrage on transactions where trust is a problem. SH could warranty to make a comparable ticket available on any consummated transaction - probably they should given the reputational loss they've incurred.
They currently guarantee "comparable replacement tickets or send you a refund." It sounds like in practice they try for the "comparable replacement tickets" first... except that according to them there were none in this case, because all the remaining tickets were really expensive!
Eesh. Comparable replacement tickets refers to a similar seat at the same event - price really isn't a factor. Nice piece of acrobatics on their lawyer's part tho.
> in such a way that it is physically impossible for the seller to take back ownership without the cooperation of the buyer.
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.
Why would you need to send them to SH? It would go like: buyer pays, seller gives buyer tickets. "Give" may mean mailing physical tickets, or an electronic transfer.
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.
Because someone needs to hold them in escrow, otherwise it's a 'he said she said' argument. How would SH know whether or not the seller actually withheld the tickets, if they've never seen proof that the tickets even exist? That or they just assume the buyer is always right and take a hit.
You're right, for paper tickets there needs to be a trusted third party that handles them. There's no need to send the tickets in advance, but once the sale occurs, you'd really have to send them through StubHub or another third party.
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
Stubhub does no such thing. For physical tickets, seller ships to buyer. For PDF tickets, seller just uploads them; the upload constitutes delivery.
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 know they don't, I'm saying they should. They are currently vulnerable to bad sellers screwing over buyers, but that's just because of how they chose to structure their business, not an inherent problem.
A lot of tickets are just in time to the seller. When I have been to the Kentucky Derby for example, I bought 2 day tickets on StubHub that will not ship to the seller until 2 weeks or so before the event. I then resold the other day on the ticket either on StubHub or Ebay.
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).
In fact, most Stubhub tickets are electronic ONLY after about 3 business days before the event. But they do nothing to validate the PDFs (not even to check for unaltered PDFs)
Does Stubhub release the sellers information to the buyer? It looks to me like the buyer has a claim in contract against the seller for $5100. That's within the small claim limit in California.
Curious - why do you think that? The seller obviously sold the tickets for a higher price, and can be forced to give the buyer the price difference, allowing the buyer to buy new tickets at the new price, fulfilling the purpose of the original contract. Why do you think a judge would disagree?
It's not obvious they sold for a higher price, they may have used them or never had them. But the real problem is proving an actual loss. There was a contract to exchange X tickets for Y money. Nothing changed hands, the buyer didn't lose anything, there aren't any damages to sue for.
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.
Your "legal analysis" is woefully lacking. Have you, for example, ever glanced at a Contracts Law text book? Or read the Wikipedia articles about contract law? Heck, have you even watched The People's Court? Just you sitting in your armchair and coming up with something that seems reasonable in your mind does not a legal argument make, or refute.
As far as profiting from hypothetical things that never happened, see Joe Jamail:
I've been involved in commercial contract litigation and was in the entertainment business for years.
If you want to resort to talking about contract law, then there's obviously no case at all, there's a contract on Stubhub and it's explicit that the buyer has no further recourse. End of discussion.
In the hypothetical, which I'm referencing, my argument holds. If you've ever been involved in actual litigation you'd know that proving damages for hypothetical things that might have happened is really hard to do, and that specific performance is an equity remedy and while possible, is generally a last resort.
In the actual situation under discussion, CA small claims is generally not a court of equity unless specifically authorized by statute, notwithstanding the perishable nature of these tickets and likelihood of even being able to get an argument heard before the game took place.
>> "If you want to resort to talking about contract law, then there's obviously no case at all, there's a contract on Stubhub and it's explicit that the buyer has no further recourse. End of discussion."
That's not the case. Buyers release and limit various remedies as against Stubhub in the user agreement but not against the seller. From the terms of service:
"Commitment to Supply.
By listing a ticket for sale, you are making a binding offer to sell that ticket to a Buyer who purchases the ticket for the price you have specified. When a Buyer accepts your offer by purchasing your ticket through our Site or Services, you are contractually bound to deliver that exact ticket for the specified price and within the required delivery timeframe. You are obligated to monitor your inventory and ensure all listings are accurate. Under no circumstances may Sellers cancel orders at one price and repost the same tickets for a higher price. Failure to fulfill your orders will lead to charges as stated in the Seller Policies.
...
Buying Tickets.
You are responsible for reading the complete listing before making a commitment to buy tickets. When placing an order, you are entering into a binding contract with the Seller to purchase those tickets. Payment is remitted to StubHub and disbursed to the seller according to our payment policy. All Sales are Final. Except for cancelled events, you will not receive a refund for completed purchases. You cannot change or cancel any orders after the sale is complete."
The Seller policy specifies a breaching seller's liability to Stubhub but it doesn't limit in any way a breaching seller's liability to the buyer.
Perhaps. Certainly one could make the argument. My point was more that it would be a major uphill battle to get damages in excess of a total refund from the seller
Among the many issues, another raised here is the presence of specifically enumerated remedies:
> Failure to fulfill your orders will lead to charges as stated in the Seller Policies.
Which could well be interpreted as limiting the liability of the seller to the fines specified in the seller policies.
Clearly there's some kind of contract here to give money in exchange for the ticket -- the question is how high are the damages in the event of non performance of the contract, and what further remedies are available once a refund has been issued.
No, that provision applies to the contract between the seller and Stubhub, it doesn't have a bearing on the contract between the buyer and the seller.
As for remedies, see my post above. The usual measure of damages in contract is expectation, not restitution. Breach of contract claims deal with "hypothetical things that never happened" all the time, that's required by the very nature of expectancy damages. And in any event this is an easy case as the FMV of the tickets at the time of breach is easy to calculate.
This is just like selling 100 shares of AAPL and then before T+3 happens deciding you aren't going to honor the sale because the price has since gone up. You aren't going to get away with just canceling the sale and returning the money.
Edit: You don't seem to understand that damages, legally speaking, include not getting something valuable just as much as it includes the loss of something valuable. And you are being patronizing where you have no reasonable cause to be, given that you've apparently never been to law school. In light of the latter point, I have no further interest in this conversation.
> This is just like selling 100 shares of AAPL and then before T+3 happens deciding you aren't going to honor the sale because the price has since gone up.
There is some resemblance but no, actually this is not just like that at all. One of the two things is a financial instrument and security and one isn't, the primary purpose of the ticket purchase is to gain the personal enjoyment of attending a sporting event. A ticket is not an asset like a stock or real estate.
I get the concept in the abstract for sure, and it's not an impossible argument. My point though, borne of some related experience, is that it's going to be awfully hard to prove damages beyond the money spent, and actual tangible consequential damages if any. Many intuitively think the legal system should work the way you describe, myself included, but in practice it has more of a laser-focus on the financial aspects of a transaction only.
Money quote: "Contract Law remedies are designed to retrace steps in an effort to put the injured party back in the same financial place they would be had the contract been properly performed. Many argue that this approach doesn’t account for emotional damage and disappointment, and they are correct."
Consequential Damages: These are intended to reimburse the injured party for indirect damages other than contractual loss; for example, loss of business profits due to an undelivered machine. In order to recover, the injuries must "flow from the breach," i.e. be a direct result of the breach, and be reasonably foreseeable to both parties when they entered into the contract.
Your opinion sounds like it comes from experience, which is usually useful in legal matters. However, buying a new ticket at the inflated price seems very reasonable to foresee by both parties and the small-claims court judges I've known are usually no-nonsense. If this came up in my life I would personally buy the tickets and take the risk in small claims court 3 months later.
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.
Genuinely curious how the law applies here. How is the "time of the breach" determined? When the buyer got the email that sale was voided? If that email were sent a few days earlier or later would that change the amount of damage the buyer suffered? That doesn't seem right. (The FMV of the tickets goes to $0 after the game, right?)
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.
This seems a lot like cancelling orders when an online system lists a $1999 product for only $19.99. Even if you already bought the product, if I catch it before the product is shipped, can I not cancel the order?
That's not the same thing at all. Listing a $1999 product for only $19.99 is clearly a mistake, not intentional on the part of the seller, and it is obvious to any reasonable person that the buyer must know that this was a mistake when purchasing it.
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).
There are clearly difference between how we see it as people, but I was talking in regards to how the law sees the contracts themselves. For example, how can the law tell the difference between a significant discount at an error. I've purchased things at 98% off their sell price and which were far less than their market value, even accounting for the sell price being above their market value. The stores had different reasons for giving such a discount, but they weren't given in error.
So was I. There is a legal difference between the two. IANAL so I don't actually know how the legal difference is defined, but I think it's something along the lines of, should it be obvious to a reasonable customer that the price is likely in error?
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.
To be fair, the very first section of the StubHub user agreement warns about this scenario:
"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.
That's just ridiculous. Nobody reads user agreements, everybody knows nobody reads user agreements, and pretty much everybody expects that if you purchase something through a company, that company is responsible for delivering.
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.
My whole point is that no matter how transparent the "sucks to be you" clause is, it's still a terrible way to run things and they should stop disclaiming responsibility.
Not sure you can hold a marketplace to the same standards of a company delivering its own product.
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).
This would be fine if they weren't advertising a "Fan Protect Guarantee." They are offering additional safe guards or at least the appearance of them to encourage buyers to take on that risk. It is extremely shady when they then don't follow through.
They technically did follow through. Their guarantee is to provide comparable tickets or a refund. Comparable tickets were not available (because their idea of "comparable" includes "at the same price," ha ha ha) and they provided a refund.
They did not follow through on actually protecting the fans, just restoring the original money. They are presenting the appearance that they will ensure the purchase, while the terms actually promise no such thing.
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.
eBay takes complete responsibility for the transactions that they facilitate. eBay guarantees that your item will ship and be delivered within a certain time and will be as described. The seller can still mess with you, but the timeframe is limited and eBay will handle the dispute. AirBnB is more of a "sucks to be you" style when it comes to canceled reservations, which is pretty weak.
At the end of the day, the most eBay will do is make sure you get your money back if the seller doesn't deliver. That's exactly what StubHub did, AND they offered him hundreds in gift certificates as well.
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.
With eBay the seller also has to deliver in a timely fashion. You're right, if they fail then the best that happens is you get your money back, but you find out reasonably quickly whether or not they're going to perform, and there's never any confusion about whether or not the transaction has completed.
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.
As others have mentioned, in many cases the seller doesn't physically have the tickets at the time of sale, and might only get them a few days before the game. Ticketmaster cooperates with venues to do this to -- dum dum dum -- avoid ticket resale. That's the problem.
The buyer made the mistake of thinking he was dealing with StubHub rather than the seller. If he had been smart, he would have asked asked StubHub for the seller's details with the comment that he would be filing suit against either StubHub or the seller.
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.
Sellers are a much smaller group and more in demand commodity than buyers. I would venture a guess that sites like Stubhub will generally favor the seller over the buyer in any dispute. That is the basis of this policy and exactly what happened in this instance.
Of course they knew what was going on. A seller "made a mistake" in listing the tickets, thus the tickets didn't actually exist in StubHub's eyes and they were forced to cancel the transaction.
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.
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.
The article says that stubhub charges a 20% fee when the seller cancels. So again, they absolutely are able to investigate every such situation while making a profit. Every ticket? No. Cases where they're making over a hundred dollars? Yes.
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.
Exactly - he should have demanded the seller's contact details so he could file a lawsuit. Per the Stubhub's TOS: "When placing an order, you are entering into a binding contract with the Seller to purchase those tickets...When a Buyer accepts your offer by purchasing your ticket through our Site or Services, you are contractually bound to deliver that exact ticket for the specified price and within the required delivery timeframe."
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.
You're right in general, but just to nitpick: If there are only 100 real tickets to an event, and 110 tickets have been promised by StubHub, 10 customers will go without tickets regardless of StubHub's willingness to pay the market rate for extra tickets.
In practice this is not how markets work. More tickets become available, even if just arb from earlier buyers, as the price increases. And regardless it's not what happened here.
If you read the fine print on the Seller's TOC regarding a "dropped sale" the only reason that such a situation is permitted is because the seller "cannot" furnish the tickets.
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.
They actually do this for some very high profile events - they require you to send in your tickets before they are placed for sale on the site. The Super Bowl is one, the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was another. But regardless of whether or not it is a high profile event, the seller should only be given a few days to deliver the tickets after the sale. That way this kind of thing won't happen. If this seller only had 5 days to deliver the tickets, for example, this buyer would have had his tickets long before the announcement.
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.
Or SH can work with other stakeholders in the industry to develop alternative systems of digital transfer and record keeping of ticket ownership.
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.
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.
"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."
I have experienced this myself with Lakers playoff tickets a few years ago ... we showed up at the game with the tickets we were sent, and they were tickets to the previous playoff series, a week or so prior.
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.
Looks like "ticketsforless.com" got some great free PR (if they manage to spin the media on this) - from the FB comments:
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.
Stubhub also said they'll get him to the game. No mention of changing policy so that it doesn't happen again. Next time it wont go viral and they wont have to fix it.
For what it's worth, I'm at least one person who bought tickets on Tickets for Less instead of StubHub because of this. This kind of goodwill PR works.
No, B&S (of which only the seller would be guilty not the marketplace) would be advertising tickets for $900 now but saying "oh they don't exist anymore but here are some for $6,000.
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.
The buyer already got their money back, so what is the damage?
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.
The damage is that "getting money back after the transaction wasn't finalized" wasn't a consensual part of the contract.
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.
I have to admit that I always assumed Stubhub took some kind of ownership interest in the tickets either (1) once posted; or (2) once sold through Stubhub.
Situations like this make it clear why it's in their interest not to do so.
For sports teams/venues that partner with them, they do.
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.
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.
They could stop making it profitable to cancel to the point of assisting in the cancel, at the very least. They could threaten to sue by themselves when the seller breaches contract on a major purchase. They could improve their guarantee.
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.
The seller probably never had tickets in the first place, which is why they had to cancel the order, since they would have taken a huge loss trying to flip tickets.
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.
Great point, my mistake. Ultimately, StubHub policies that condone speculative selling (not releasing tickets at purchase time), allowed the seller to renege on the agreement.
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 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.
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.
"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!"
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
> 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.
So, to avoid having to do marketing themselves, or to hire a firm, the event planner goes with a possibly corrupt system that by all appearances the fans of the event despise?
I'm more of the mind that these things are so entrenched that neither fans or event planners have a choice.
The role Ticketmaster plays in the live event business is much bigger than simple middlemen. They provide the previously mentioned marketing, promotion, and discovery. They provide box office management. They provide customer service. They manage the secondary market. They provide business intelligence. They represent artists. They even own their own venues for a complete vertical monopoly.
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.
I wouldn't say the business tactics that businesses like Ticketmaster use to get so entrenched in their markets is necessarily corruption. But, once entrenched they often start conducting corrupt, or at least unethical, practices.
> No, fans have no choice. Entertainers allow it by using Ticketmaster.
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.
My understanding is that Ticketmaster has exclusive contracts with the vast majority of primary venues in the US. Nobody, artist or venue, is really choosing Tickemaster any more than a Comcast customer chooses Comcast as the only game in town.
Confronted this when looking at Hamilton tickets recently. The thing that is crazy for venues and artists is how much of the value they are losing to scalpers via StubHub. If venues forced non-transferability (or some better limitation) and staggered releasing, they would be better able to appropriately price tickets without feeding the StubHubs of the world.
I bought tickets to the New Year's Game, and I couldn't list it for sale on stubhub the day of. I had to use their Last Minute Services, but the office was closed.
They got rid of LMS for all but the largest metro areas (not even Bay Area events have LMS coverage for Sharks, Warriors, or baseball anymore)... not even for the NBA playoffs.
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.
People need to realize that buying from Stubhub guarantees you only this:
if your order isn't filled (or is filled with bogus tickets) and we can't find you tickets we consider equivalent or better at some point (even during the game, then you'll get a refund). The only thing "guaranteed" is your payment.
(You might also get additional credit toward a future purchase.)
People need to be aware of this when buying major-event tickets: they are happy to "walk" you (give you no ticket alternatives at all) if it's at all costly to cover a bogus sale. I've seen it a number of times at their pickup sites.
So, for example, if this happens at a Super Bowl, you are still out all of your transportation, lodging, and other expenses.
147 comments
[ 231 ms ] story [ 3769 ms ] threadI 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.
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.
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.
As far as profiting from hypothetical things that never happened, see Joe Jamail:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-man-who-crushed-tex...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_performance
If you want to resort to talking about contract law, then there's obviously no case at all, there's a contract on Stubhub and it's explicit that the buyer has no further recourse. End of discussion.
In the hypothetical, which I'm referencing, my argument holds. If you've ever been involved in actual litigation you'd know that proving damages for hypothetical things that might have happened is really hard to do, and that specific performance is an equity remedy and while possible, is generally a last resort.
In the actual situation under discussion, CA small claims is generally not a court of equity unless specifically authorized by statute, notwithstanding the perishable nature of these tickets and likelihood of even being able to get an argument heard before the game took place.
That's not the case. Buyers release and limit various remedies as against Stubhub in the user agreement but not against the seller. From the terms of service:
"Commitment to Supply.
By listing a ticket for sale, you are making a binding offer to sell that ticket to a Buyer who purchases the ticket for the price you have specified. When a Buyer accepts your offer by purchasing your ticket through our Site or Services, you are contractually bound to deliver that exact ticket for the specified price and within the required delivery timeframe. You are obligated to monitor your inventory and ensure all listings are accurate. Under no circumstances may Sellers cancel orders at one price and repost the same tickets for a higher price. Failure to fulfill your orders will lead to charges as stated in the Seller Policies.
...
Buying Tickets.
You are responsible for reading the complete listing before making a commitment to buy tickets. When placing an order, you are entering into a binding contract with the Seller to purchase those tickets. Payment is remitted to StubHub and disbursed to the seller according to our payment policy. All Sales are Final. Except for cancelled events, you will not receive a refund for completed purchases. You cannot change or cancel any orders after the sale is complete."
The Seller policy specifies a breaching seller's liability to Stubhub but it doesn't limit in any way a breaching seller's liability to the buyer.
Among the many issues, another raised here is the presence of specifically enumerated remedies:
> Failure to fulfill your orders will lead to charges as stated in the Seller Policies.
Which could well be interpreted as limiting the liability of the seller to the fines specified in the seller policies.
Clearly there's some kind of contract here to give money in exchange for the ticket -- the question is how high are the damages in the event of non performance of the contract, and what further remedies are available once a refund has been issued.
As for remedies, see my post above. The usual measure of damages in contract is expectation, not restitution. Breach of contract claims deal with "hypothetical things that never happened" all the time, that's required by the very nature of expectancy damages. And in any event this is an easy case as the FMV of the tickets at the time of breach is easy to calculate.
This is just like selling 100 shares of AAPL and then before T+3 happens deciding you aren't going to honor the sale because the price has since gone up. You aren't going to get away with just canceling the sale and returning the money.
Edit: You don't seem to understand that damages, legally speaking, include not getting something valuable just as much as it includes the loss of something valuable. And you are being patronizing where you have no reasonable cause to be, given that you've apparently never been to law school. In light of the latter point, I have no further interest in this conversation.
There is some resemblance but no, actually this is not just like that at all. One of the two things is a financial instrument and security and one isn't, the primary purpose of the ticket purchase is to gain the personal enjoyment of attending a sporting event. A ticket is not an asset like a stock or real estate.
I get the concept in the abstract for sure, and it's not an impossible argument. My point though, borne of some related experience, is that it's going to be awfully hard to prove damages beyond the money spent, and actual tangible consequential damages if any. Many intuitively think the legal system should work the way you describe, myself included, but in practice it has more of a laser-focus on the financial aspects of a transaction only.
Here's a discussion of a very similar situation: http://wileylegal.com/super-bowl-breaches-of-contract/
Money quote: "Contract Law remedies are designed to retrace steps in an effort to put the injured party back in the same financial place they would be had the contract been properly performed. Many argue that this approach doesn’t account for emotional damage and disappointment, and they are correct."
Consequential Damages: These are intended to reimburse the injured party for indirect damages other than contractual loss; for example, loss of business profits due to an undelivered machine. In order to recover, the injuries must "flow from the breach," i.e. be a direct result of the breach, and be reasonably foreseeable to both parties when they entered into the contract.
Your opinion sounds like it comes from experience, which is usually useful in legal matters. However, buying a new ticket at the inflated price seems very reasonable to foresee by both parties and the small-claims court judges I've known are usually no-nonsense. If this came up in my life I would personally buy the tickets and take the risk in small claims court 3 months later.
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.
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.
https://twitter.com/StubHub/status/684906796813697024?
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://twitter.com/StubHub/status/684906796813697024?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch
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.
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.
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.
https://twitter.com/StubHub/status/684906796813697024
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So, for example, if this happens at a Super Bowl, you are still out all of your transportation, lodging, and other expenses.