Decker

I have used Stub Hub for over a decade without any problem. But I bought tickets for my wife to see Harry Styles at a concert scheduled for tonight and it's been a NIGHTMARE. I bought the tickets on 7/3/21. They were almost $700 for the pair, including a whopping $160 in fees to Stub Hub. I was surprised after making the purchase to see rather than getting my tickets immediately, they claimed they would be sent by 9/3/21, the day before the event. I was pretty upset but their crappy website kept insisting that I had to wait until that day (which seems insane for an electronic transfer of tickets). When the tickets hadn't arrived by yesterday evening, I called their CS, but was told by the message they would only take calls for events on that day. So I hung up. This morning I again checked and the tickets never arrived. Scrolling through their comically inadequate Help page, they don't have any sort of online chat, they just send you to their Stub Hub Support forum which is just full of unanswered posts of people who didn't get their tickets. I have now been on hold for 90 minutes and there's no end in sight to this phone Hold. I don't know what to do at this point. I see that others have been on hold for 3 hours without anyone picking up. I know my seat numbers and wonder if I should just go to MGM Garden Arena tonight with proof of purchase and see if they can let me in? I don't know. This is inexcusably bad customer service. I want to report them to the Better Business Bureau.

TomOpus

Do they have a Twitter presence?

Decker

No I looked. They haven’t posted in months. It’s shocking how shoddy this service is.

Decker

A sampling of reviews at the Better Business Bureau :
https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-franci...stomer-reviews

The Cow

I've used it twice this year (many, many times over the years) and didn't have any issues so far.

One thing that I don't like is that many times you can only see the row number now, not the actual seat numbers. That's been a deal breaker for me few times.

dex14

Doesn't the seller set the delivery by date? I used to resell tickets all the time a few years ago... haven't in the last two years or so for obvious reason... but I always remember being the one to set the delivery by date.

With Harry Styles in particular, I've seen posts on other shows of his (from the actual ticket provider, not resale) that the "Tickets will be delivered 72 hours prior to event." So that is by the performer's own request. Which, in turn, wouldn't allow the reseller to deliver to you. So it sounds like you may have a bad seller who isn't keeping track of what they need to deliver.

Since you bought on StubHub, MGM isn't going to be able to help you at all. AXS (who was the actual seller for the show) does have their ticketing system integrated with StubHub, so you may be able to get somewhere with them, but that is unlikely. Does StubHub have an in person ticketing location in Vegas? I know NYC does. That would be your best option for help probably.

Decker

It's insane. I waited on hold for literally 200 minutes before hanging up. Never got to speak to anyone.
And if you look at my order it still shows that I don't have my tickets despite being past the delivery day, and without any sort of recourse besides that terrible phone line

And no, Stub Hub doesn't have a Vegas office any more.

TomOpus

Wow, that's some bullshit there. Never used them and never will, now.

dex14

I'm surprised a company like them doesn't have the get a callback option instead of having you wait on hold all that time.

Did you try this Twitter? It is supposed to be only for events within 24 hours. https://twitter.com/teamstubhub?lang=en


Browsing on Twitter... it looks like you aren't the only one in this situation... so it may have been an issue where the tickets never got released and the resellers haven't received them to then give to the buyers.

Decker

This was exactly right. I had my son call CS with my info about 3 hours ago and he's on the phone with them now, texting me at MGM. They tried to call the guy but no answer. Apparently they will get me other tickets. We shall see...

MLBFan24

If this happened to me, I would just do a credit card charge dispute. The evidence - no email delivery (timestamp) or physical delivery (package tracking) of tickets. Pretty simple to prove.

dex14

No reason to do that with StubHub. They guarantee the tickets by either giving you a refund or comparable tickets.

Decker

It was much anxiety provoking. We stood at the front of the entrance for an hour waiting for the replacement tickets. They came at 8. But the happy ending is that they're among the best seats in the house in this in-the-round staging



dex14

Jenny!

Decker

I was way more excited about seeing her than I am about seeing Harry. ​​​​​​
I missed some of it waiting for my tickets but yeah she's great.

MLBFan24

Good to know. I’ve never purchased from StubHub.

Decker

^ With the caveat that you have to call them and talk with an actual human being to get the refund. And let me tell you, that isn't an easy thing to do these days.
And with those sort of service fees, there's no excuse for that shitty staffing.

TheBang

The problem is that ticket reselling is a shitshow these days because of all the event cancellations due to the Delta surge. They're dealing with tons of people calling for refunds, etc., and they want to make it as difficult as possible to actually get customer service, because then they can avoid refunds.

It puts the ticket resale marketplaces in a cash crunch when they have to fully refund all the cancellations, which is why they automatically offer "credits" on their service instead. They'll only give you cash refunds on-demand, and only in states or jurisdictions where they're required by law.

I'd be really careful these days buying resold tickets because whenever events are cancelled, refunds go back to the original purchaser only. That means if you did a private sale (even if they transferred the tickets to you through, say, friend-transfer on the Ticketmaster site), the refund will only be given to the original purchaser unless you have hard copy tickets. The marketplaces (like StubHub) will guarantee your refund, but like I said above, they will only give you credit wherever possible instead of cash refunds.

Decker, I'm glad your situation worked out for you. Even though it required a lot of effort on your part, I hope it was worth it in the end. It could have gone badly, though, because their FanProtect guarantee says they will get you comparable or better tickets, but if not, then just offer you a refund of what you paid. You could have been out all that time and effort with just a refund of your money. https://www.stubhub.com/legal/?section=fp1

John Galt

Stubhub, in particular, got hit in a big cash crunch during the COVID mass cancelations. They were in the process of completing their acquisition by ViaGoGo (or maybe it was already completed?) when COVID hit and didn't have the cash reserves they needed. They're kind of caught in the middle of things because they've collected cash from customers, paid the sellers for the tickets, and used their commissions to fund operations. Now with events getting canceled en masse, they had customers wanting refunds, but they're unable to collect the money from sellers because they, in turn, are waiting for refunds from Live Nation/Ticketmaster (who are also not wanting to just send billions of dollars of cash back out the door). And again, Stubhub's commissions funded company operations that had already been completed and now had no new cash coming in to continue operating. It was a real shitshow given the huge amount of deferred revenue that live event companies keep on their balance sheet and caused a squeeze throughout the industry.

The result of all this was mass layoffs/furloughs at Stubhub and they've been operating on a skeleton crew for awhile. Even as they've ramped up hiring, they still face training issues and lost a lot of knowledgable company employees in the process.

In my own experience, I sold a pair of tickets for spring training this year and the customer reported they were refused entry because it was pod seating and I had broken up the pod. Stubhub was refusing to pay me. It was a two seat pod, I didn't split it and had a receipt showing the purchase. I was at the game and even found a picture I took that showed the customers sitting in their seats enjoying their beers. I called Stubhub and they said to forward the purchase receipt to them and they would investigate. I did that and called every two weeks for three months and they just kept saying their investigations take time. I was days away from filing an arbitration dispute with them when they finally sent me payment for the tickets. It took nearly four months for someone to just look at a receipt and process a $50 payment.

zyzzle

But, isn't that what having adequate insurance is for? Situations like this which arise very rarely, but are possibe, even "expected?" Liability insurance should be carried by such a company dealing with billions of dollars of cashflow. Also, the blame is partially on the customers, since they took a known risk in buying their tickets at this capricious, irregular, and ill-advised time. I'd be waiting 5 years or longer to buy any such tickets, but that's just me being very cautious, and knowing that once somebody has your cash, it's very, VERY hard to get it back for any reason, however justified. Plane reservations, cruises, hotels, etc, all of the hospitality and tourist industry is hit hard, but that doesn't mean that I should be stupid in planning trips right now, nor should I feel guilty in not doing so.

John Galt

I don’t think there would be insurance to cover such instances since there’s technically no loss. And yes, companies should have a tight grip on cash flow (monitor your deferred revenue and make sure you have the assets to back it up) but they’ve operated this way for decades without any issue.

You can’t blame customers for that. Concerts and sports often have lead times of 12-18 months before the event. There was no way to anticipate something like Covid.

Decker

The way you guys explain it makes sense to me. But man, was it aggravating. I felt so helpless with no customer support and waiting 200 minutes without an answer is an experience I never, ever want to do again. But hey, it did work out well for me in the end (the VERY END).
They need to add more staff to handle the calls at least. And virtual tickets should be immediate delivery. Waiting until the last minute is NOT a good solution.

John Galt

I definitely understand the frustration. I certainly would be too, I just wanted to give a little background into what was going on.

There’s not much they can do to expedite delivery in most of those cases though. Availability is set by Ticketmaster/AXS and often they won’t allow tickets to be transferred until just days before a show (and sometimes as little as a few hours). So even if they bought the ticket a year before the show, and you bought it off stubhub shortly after, they still can’t initiate the transfer until the delay is lifted.

story

"," he said, about every business in the country.

Abob Teff

Decker, you run a business. You know that you need cash to hire staff.

Yes, a sudden and dramatic loss of revenue is a traumatic event to a business. Whether you are a multi-billion dollar arbitrage company or a local restaurant, responsible management prepares for rainy days. I know it is a far cry, but when I ran a very small local non-profit, my financial goal was to have enough money on hand so that we could provide a year's worth of programs to our community IF we hit a rough patch and had NO money came in for a year. I know that is easier said when you are talking about a youth sports program with a budget in the tens-of-thousands, but the concept is the same.

If you want a good industry to do case studies on, look at municipal run utilities (particularly water/sewer). There are very few responsibly run municipal utilities who have sound financial strategies. Most municipalities see these operations as cash flows to raid when they need funds for other things (in the same way many executives treat their companies), rather than putting that money where it belongs to prevent long-term problems. This results in "crisis begets crisis."

TLDR: Fuck Stub Hub and every other online arbitrage company.