4 ms·

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 selle

by curun1r 11y ago

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.

mbcrower 11y ago
Based on the customer service emails it looks like StubHub knew full well what was going on and aided the seller in pulling out of the agreement.
- slg 11y ago
  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.
- GigabyteCoin 11y ago
  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.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    >It is impossible to know if the seller is telling the truth in this situation or not. Everybody makes mistakes 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.
    - GigabyteCoin 11y ago
      >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.
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        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.
- eli 11y ago
  I'm not sure if StubHub could force somebody to sell tickets they no longer want to sell if they wanted to.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    The tickets were already sold. What would be forced here would be delivery of what was sold. They can't exactly force that either, but they should be able to force penalties or restitution if they fail to perform.
    - mbcrower 11y ago
      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.
      - DrScump 11y ago
        does a seller profile appear next to the listing No. Sellers can't even provide details on their tickets besides the few checkbox yes/no options.
dbot 11y ago
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.

by curun1r 11y ago

mbcrower 11y ago

Based on the customer service emails it looks like StubHub knew full well what was going on and aided the seller in pulling out of the agreement.

slg 11y ago
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.
GigabyteCoin 11y ago
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.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  >It is impossible to know if the seller is telling the truth in this situation or not. Everybody makes mistakes 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.
  - GigabyteCoin 11y ago
    >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.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      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.
eli 11y ago
I'm not sure if StubHub could force somebody to sell tickets they no longer want to sell if they wanted to.
- mikeash 11y ago
  The tickets were already sold. What would be forced here would be delivery of what was sold. They can't exactly force that either, but they should be able to force penalties or restitution if they fail to perform.
  - mbcrower 11y ago
    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.
    - DrScump 11y ago
      does a seller profile appear next to the listing No. Sellers can't even provide details on their tickets besides the few checkbox yes/no options.

dbot 11y ago

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.