Stubhub or Snubhub?
It must be Snub…..
After this weekend my go-to for aftermarket concert and event tickets source is on my SNUB list. It all started one night while we were sitting in front of the TV when a commercial came on- “Let it go, let it go…”. The live Frozen show was coming to the Baltimore, Md Hippodrome Theater and it was instantly decided by the little girl literally wearing her Princess Anna gown in the room that we were going. I grabbed my tablet and jumped onto Ticketmaster to see the dates and times. We decided on Sunday, June 11th for the 1PM matinee. Choices for the showtime and date we selected were pretty bleak; between the season ticket holders and previous sales next to nothing was left. I wandered over to the Stubhub site, entered the date, time and number of tickets. SCORE- they had row AA center orchestra seats! The price was outrageous but I’ve paid far more for concert tickets AND my 7 year old is my little princess so a few clicks and they were ours…… or so I thought. That was April 24th.
The weeks leading up to the show were filled with rewatches of Frozen, Frozen II, Olaf’s Adventures, Live Action Frozen Shows on YouTube and every frozen toy scattered around the house. I wanted to “let it go” before I lost my mind but to see the belief and happiness in my kid washes all that away. It’s also a useful parent weapon- “if you don’t pick up your toys we’re not going to see Frozen!”. We did the parent countdown- “4 more days to Frozen, 2 more days til Frozen…….”. We discussed what we were going to wear and did many full-dress practice runs.
Things began to come undone a few days before the show. Our calendars reminded us the show was days away (as if the 7 year old let anyone within earshot forget). As I usually do a few days before a show I logged into my Stubhub account to get the electronic tickets and transfer them to my Apple Wallet. That’s when I noticed they were not instant transfer tickets and marked as not being available until 24 hours before the show. Some venues and shows do this to detour fake ticket scammers and as a FU to resellers. Overall I was not concerned because the show was a few days away and I’ve bought plenty of tickets that weren’t delivered until a bit before the show. Friday eve I received the message from Stubhub that the seller had transferred the tickets and I should receive the transfer email shortly, if not already waiting in my inbox.
Nothing was there and I checked through the night. Next morning I checked as soon as I got up- still nothing. Not feeling warm or fuzzy I called Stubhub, waited on hold for 20 minutes and talked to someone about my missing ticket transfer message. He gave me explicit instructions on how to search my email, check my spam folder and a few other things to try. He then said the seller would be requested to resend the email. A brief aside- I’ve owned the same email address and domain for almost 24 years. I manage the junk folder, what goes in it and -really- understand how email works.
I asked what are the chances of me actually getting the tickets and he assured me it would be fine. I should have the ticket transfer email the next morning (the day of the show). If not I should call and they would set me up with comparable tickets. The next morning nothing. The show was now hours away, the TV was replaying Frozen and my kid was deciding what she was going to wear to the big show. I was sick to my stomach when I called Stubhub for the 3rd time in as many days. The call wait time was surprisingly short. I was forced through the different, mandatory email searches before they said I should get an email within 20 minutes from Stubhub allowing me to search through the available comparable tickets.
20 minutes later I had no new email so I was back on the phone. It took a while for the rep to pull up my information. That’s when she broke it to me- no tickets were left for the show. I broke, I cried at the thought of having to walk into the other room and tell my daughter we were not going to see Frozen. She then told me I’d get a 100% refund under the Stubhub guarantee. This was just salt in my gaping wound. Without reading the “fine print” I had believed the Stubhub guarantee was a 125% refund if something exactly like this happened- but it was not. I allowed Stubhub to “hold” almost $1000 of my money for 5 weeks with 0 assurance we would actually receive tickets.
I refused to be defeated by Stubhub’s poor business practice that equates to “if it works out great; if not…”. Still in tears I tried Ticketmaster and every ticket reseller you’ve never heard of and no one had tickets for this show that we were suppose to be leaving for in less than an hour. I called the box office of the Hippodrome in a last ditch effort and they were kind. They had a few holdback tickets they made available for disasters like this. I was able to by 4 tickets for the show (they would not see an odd number of tickets) but we only used 3 of the seats. We sat in the 2nd to the last row of the upper balcony and paid almost as much as I had already paid to Stubhub for the tickets I never received.
Once we were seated, settled and my shot nerves had calmed I stood up and looked down at the center orchestra section. I counted back 4 rows and over… every seat was full including the seats that I bought through Stubhub. Errrr, I mean Snubhub.
