Introduction
I had sold 4x U2 NY tickets on SH the other week for about $500 gross to the buyer, $2000 total. I should have known something was odd because my ROI was just too high on the sale. Yesterday, I got a voicemail from SH wanting to talk about the order. I called them up and they told me the tickets were for San Jose and not New York. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. I had heard this happening to others, and I figured it was a matter of time it would happen to me.
They tell me the penalty is either 40% of the sale or the price difference of getting similar tickets, whichever is GREATER! They told me they were able to get the $2000 that was deposited to my bank back, and then hit me with another $2500 to my credit card since the replacement tickets cost $1200 each x 4 = $4,800. The actual San Jose tickets will probably only net me $500, so I’m out $4,300 for the mistake.
I had told them it was odd that their OCR didn’t read the city, but the rep said the OCR doesn’t really read any of that information and that they trust the sellers to upload the correct tickets.
Lessons Learned
Double and triple check all your tickets! Also use a spreadsheet to track your tickets. The other readers that this happened too double listed and couldn’t cancel in time on the other site and/or forgot they had sold the tickets already.
I think the lesson should be let true fans buy tickets for their pleasure and not became a hideous middle man extracting a fortune out it. I’m glad to see some artists now insist that one person has to be named at the time of ticket purchase and attend the concert or else none of the group in that sale get to go in. Tough luck if you’ve bought it on a scalper website. These artists have official reseller sites where you can sell your tickets at original face value if you can’t make it, so no excuses for this sort of greed.
Sorry to hear this Vinh. Something that can happen to anyone. In a way thankful that I learnt about it from your mistake
Damn, dude… Grinding away at dozens of ticket sales for a few bucks here and there, sometimes breaking even and then one black swan comes around and kills all your profits… Just doesn’t seem worthwhile to me given the risk/reward profile, but it seems like you enjoy the thrill. Chalk it up to the game, right?
I’ll keep grinding, but definitely do a 2nd and 3rd check from now on.
So wait, you uploaded the wrong tickets to SH?
Yeah, I’m not sure I follow what the mistake is. Did you actually have NY tix to sell or did you accidentally list SJ tix for a NY show? How did you not know what city your tix were for?
The tickets were for SJ but I uploaded them as NY. I did not have those exact seats for NY so that’s why they made me buy similar seats. How did it happen? Cuz I bought both cities and wasn’t careful.
Sorry to hear it! But OTOH, good to know the lengths that StubHub will go to for their customer.
Damn! Sorry Vinh : (