The Consumer Complaints Blog

So on August 3rd, I bought some Leonard Cohen tickets. For that reason, this may start a Leonard Cohen flamewar. Cohen’s awesome. But that’s not the point.

I bought the tickets on StubHub for almost five hundred bucks. Four tickets, Leonard Cohen, and my parents kind of met through his music–it’s a gift for them–so I’m cool with that. Now, on August 10th, StubHub charged me a second time for the $500.

“La dee da!,” I thought, a naive smile crossing my fresh, handsome face. “I’ll call them and sort this out.”

I call StubHub, and sit on hold for five minutes.

“One moment,” a voice said. I sat on hold for half an hour, then a dude picks up.

“Yeah, I was charged twice for a transaction.” I gave the number.

“Sir, it shows here that we tried to charge you 50 times.”

“Well, then, you messed up.”

“No, none of them have gone through except the most recent one.”

“OK, something’s wrong with the system, but I can prove it, I’ve got two emails from Paypal and I can send you screenshots of my Paypal and bank account.”

“I don’t have email, sir.” This is an Internet company. Head asplode.

I asked for someone with an email address, and was given the general support email. I emailed them all of the proof I had of the double-charge, then called PayPal, got an email from them confirming the double charge, and sent that to them. I then called back. Nobody would read the emails I’d sent, and kept saying they’d only charged once. The next day, I spoke to a manager, and he told me the situation had been “resolved” but would not say how. No refund to this point. Eventually, I told them I planned on posting on the Internet about this, and they said, quote, “you’re not the first person to say that sir.” I explained that when people say that, it’s not because you’re doing a good job, and the reason they’d heard it before was because they’re horse’s asses. I may not have used this exact language.

Finally, I went to my bank and filed fraud papers (my teller laughed and said that “they(StubHub) were really screwing with me,” which isn’t a great sign), which as a result stopped my PayPal account from working with my bank account. I work through Paypal, so this is a problem for me. Luckily, my bank’s pretty good, and they gave me provisional credit and waved overdraft fees that had resulted.

Last night, I emailed them with a request to cancel the tickets–friggin’ Craigslist would be safer–and links to a few places I’d posted this story online. Today, without any explanation, apology, or anything else, they refunded the second charge.

So my situation was resolved (sort of) after a bunch of threats and waiting on hold for over four hours, running around to banks and talking to Paypal customer service multiple times (btw, Paypal CS is awesome, though you do have to wait on hold for a little while). The purpose of this incessant griping is to try to let your readers know not to use StubHub, and to see if you guys had any similar stories about ’em.

I’m hoping this could on the site, because I was really screwed by this and want to cost a bad company some money. Fun, eh? I’ve got emails from Paypal and Stubhub if you’d like to see them.

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.