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 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.
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.
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.
does a seller profile appear next to the listing
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 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.
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! ;)
"StubHub should be more transparent about the seller-side risks involved when "selling tickets" to customers"
"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.
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.
"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.