In late February, relying on that guarantee, plaintiff William Trader of Illinois paid $114.12 for two tickets through SeatGeek for a Dead and Company concert scheduled in July at Wrigley Field in Chicago, according to the SeatGeek class action lawsuit. Patients made into prostitutes and sex slaves, bilking insurance companies out of millions, Sac_County Iowa Prosecutor Ben Smith pays $750,000 to settle Ripoff Report 1983 civil rights lawsuit.. Federal Judge stops prosecutors abuse of power against ED Magedson Founder of Ripoff Report. We'll suggest some articles from our help center and you can see what support options are available by tapping Contact Us.. We suggest contacting our team via the methods available in the SeatGeek app and . I reached out to Seat Geek via email (there is no phone number) countless times inquiring about my tickets but never received a response (other than a canned response telling me that volumes were high and I should look at their FAQs). If we send you a request to remove our content from your website, you must agree to do so immediately. Hovering my cursor over it, I could view a smaller disclosure that read, The seller has not yet received your tickets, but youll get them before the event.. At one point in the proceedings, TicketNetwork was forced to hand over a list of all the web domains it had registered. This is a marketplace where its very easy to confuse consumers and give them bad information., In February 2020, leaders in the secondary ticket market were called before Congress to explain their fees. TicketNetwork declined Reveals requests to describe its affiliation with this site. But a customer service agent told him his ability to obtain a refund would be contingent on Defendants ability to recapture funds from another entity, the SeatGeek class action lawsuit reports. Between Jan. 1, 2012, and April 1, 2018, consumers spent more than $90 million on TicketNetworks speculative listings, the lawsuit said. Please note, we will not provide indemnification if you are located or publishing outside the United States, but you may contact us to obtain a license and indemnification on a case-by-case basis. Additionally, Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster revealed that it would only refund customers for cancelled or rescheduled events, however, many postponed shows have no reschedule date in sight. All business will get complaints. Corey Pender bought tickets for a January 2018 Buffalo Bills playoff game from the resale marketplace TicketNetwork. But he never got the tickets. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.. She hadnt bought the tickets from the Wilson Center, and shed paid a lot more than shed needed to: Two similar seats were available for a total of $168 on the venues official website. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from the rest. We do not compensate anyone who republishes our work. Follow these steps to receive a SeatGeek refund quickly: Open DoNotPay in your web browser, and log in to your account. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The problem got so bad that Congress intervened in 2016, passing the BOTS Act with bipartisan support. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. All Rights Reserved. But on TicketNetworks site, hundreds of seats were already available on a color-coded seating map. For information on deleting the cookies, please consult your browsers help function. Thanks for contacting us. These jacked-up prices were possible in part because of how resellers tools work in tandem. Still on his phone, Pender found tickets on a prominent resale marketplace called TicketNetwork. Sports. The ticket buyers assume the high prices theyre seeing are official because they think theyve arrived at the venues box office. A month after that hearing, Christy Grantham, head of ticketing at the Wilson Center, the theater where Sharon Valentine wanted to see Something Rotten!, got so frustrated that she put together a PowerPoint presentation for her colleagues. And in 2016, StubHub announced a partnership with the Philadelphia 76ers that combined primary and secondary inventory in one place. document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); document.getElementById( "ak_js_3" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); document.getElementById( "ak_js_4" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Please note: Top Class Actions is not a settlement Vlahakis currently is representing a Fire fan in a federal lawsuit against team . . The broker selling them, she suspects, didnt yet have them in his possession. Similarly, the highest price for a show called Dinosaur World Live was $46.96 at the Wilson Center. Skip to Content. Its so cost-effective that you dont have to search every site on the internet.. Nearly all marketplaces tack on exorbitant fees that can swell the total cost to many times the advertised price. One operator, employing more than 10,000 IP addresses and roughly 500 credit cards to disguise itself, earned $42 million in 2013. Our reporter(s) must be bylined. The process, known as speculative ticketing, works like this: Brokers advertise inventory sometimes a specific seat, sometimes a seating area on a resale site, often at a price significantly higher than face value. 02/22/2023. Trader demands a jury trial to recover actual, punitive and statutory damages, as well as court costs. Then brokers fulfill their speculative sales by buying directly from venues like Granthams at cost often not until a consumer has already purchased the tickets at a premium. The FTC sued the reseller and two of its partners in 2014 for knowingly profiting from deceptive venue-mimicking tactics. The partners named in the suit had employed audacious methods to fool consumers into believing theyd arrived at an official venue box office, according to the complaint. Miami Florida, Old Town Atelier Dan Kolar Alexandra Kolar Press and Ink Scamming and Blocking Paying Customers Temecula California, Full Service Network Jason Soltis, David Schwencke (CEO) They could not provide phone services needed, had to change providers after working with them for months to fix things. Buffalo prevailed, to Penders delight. IndustryTop Story REBUTTAL BOX But, what I'm reviewing . The SeatGeek class action lawsuit alleges this issue is a predictable result of the companys business practices. In general, it is legitimate, safe, and reliable. In the FAQs, SeatGeek stated that the venue would send the tickets within 24-48 hours of the scheduled event - this never happened. Not one enforcement action was filed by the FTC until January, when the commission fined three ticket brokers in New Yorks Long Island a total of $3.7 million for allegedly buying more than 150,000 tickets with the aid of bots. Why?!?! I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to see that my ticket also included a $140.65 service fee a 32% markup over the advertised total. Companies like his, he added in an interview, drive down prices because they provide ticket buyers more options. Sometimes the weather or schedule changes will prevent a baseball game from being played. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Top Class Actions is a Proud Member of the American Bar Association, Various Trademarks held by their respective owners. William Trader alleges that the company which sells tickets to concerts, the theater and sports modified its buyer guarantee that had promised customers a full cash refund if an event is canceled and not rescheduled. Ripoff Report Needs Your Help! If you are still being charged for a flight, event or service even though it was canceled due to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus public health emergency, you may be entitled to compensation. drug injury lawsuits and product liability lawsuits. I didnt want the money; I wanted the tickets, he said. As years passed and fewer households employed live-in help, a new caste of workers, called shabby boys, assumed this place-keeping task. Further along in the transaction, the sites payment step included another HURRY! timer, this one set for 10 minutes, as well as a disclosure revealing that tickets would be delivered by Jan. 23, 2022 nearly a year from the date I was checking out. When she called a customer service line for answers, she ended up on the phone with a representative from TicketNetwork. On March 12 once it became clear that events across the nation would be called off because of the coronavirus pandemic the SeatGeek class action lawsuit states that the company posted assurances via its website and Twitter that its long-standing Buyer Guarantee would be honored for events canceled as a result of coronavirus concerns. Lost your password? .top-of-article-prompt{border-bottom:1px solid #cccccc;padding-bottom:32px;}. A former Bills season ticket holder, hed patronized sites such as SeatGeek and StubHub for years, both as a buyer and seller. Decide if you want DoNotPay to send a dispute letter for you. and upon the rescheduling process done automatically for March 1st, 2022, I immediately contacted support and expressed that I could not make the tues march 1st and requested tickets to wed march 2nd. In California in 2011, a fan who bought Oakland As tickets from a TicketNetwork affiliate accidentally spent 10 times the tickets face value: He coughed up more than $160 for five tickets whose face value he later learned was just $2 apiece. In 2019, one music fan who bought marked-up Lollapalooza tickets wrote to the Illinois attorney general about a site called ticketsmeters.com, whose layout and logo closely resemble Ticketmasters. Tickets stolen and will now do nothing to correct it. Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Pandora | Amazon Music. So are clever ticket sellers who cash in on unsuspecting customers. I am being charged $380.97 for a base price$$$ what is a base price and is it reasonable? All rights reserved. Under this business model, the brokers and SeatGeek both make more money than if SeatGeek were responsible and held onto the proceeds of the sale until the event occurred.. Please credit us early in the coverage. Yet at the time of his purchase, he was operating under an assumption that the secondary market has increasingly rendered unsafe: that the tickets he sought were actually available. Amazon Household Goods. strict standards for business conduct. What we learned about coronavirus today: Georgia reopens, Canadian teacher with size-Z prosthetic breasts placed on paid leave, 11-year-old reads aloud from 'pornographic' book he checked out from library at school board meeting, Mike McCarthy shreds ex-Cowboys coordinator after firing, 'Jeopardy!' Why Ripoff Report will not release author information! Legislation introduced by Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., in 2019 would require the same for ticketing. Follow him on Twitter: @ByardDuncan. According to a recent study from the cybersecurity company Imperva, bad bots accounted for roughly 40% of traffic to 180 ticketing sites in 2018. Corporate Advocacy Program: How to repair your business reputation. Photo by DaShaunae Marisa for Reveal. As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work with as many people as possible. He reportedly tried to receive a refund, but SeatGeek denied to refund his money. What the BBB has done to consumers for over 100 years is one of the many reasons why Ripoff Report was created. Follow the instructions from the chatbot. According to a 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office, secondary market sites that didnt impersonate venues had a markup of roughly 74% over the venues original ticket price. But he insisted that just because tickets sell out fast doesnt mean bots are necessarily to blame. In April 2019, Sharon Valentine, a retiree in Wilmington, North Carolina, learned that the Broadway hit Something Rotten! was coming to the nearby Wilson Center. Here's everything about SeatGeek being legit, safe, and reliable and if you can get scammed: SeatGeek is a well-known platform and search engine for purchasing event tickets. Immediately doubting her purchase, she started poking around. Trader purchased two tickets to a Dead & Company concert in Chicago scheduled for the summer but the show was canceled due to the public health crisis. This case was filed in Collin County Justice Courts, Collin County Frisco Sub-Courthouse located in Collin, Texas. Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. (Google removed these videos from the web several years ago.) However, this can result in some functions no longer being available. Privacy Policy | Required fields are marked *. Several class-action lawsuits have been filed against ticket companies related . Still, if you provide detailed information, including . Yet in spite of this, the company has admitted that it is reasonable to assume that speculative tickets are sometimes sold through the StubHub site.. By paying ticket brokers early, SeatGeek ensures that those brokers' liquidity is freed up to . Billy Beane-backed RedBall raised US$575 million in 2020 with the intention of acquiring a business in the sports, media and analytics sectors and agreed a deal with SeatGeek You refresh your browser as the seconds tick down to a team or artists official sale time. By the 19th century, so-called ticket speculators who purchased seats to sell at a markup were so prevalent that they became media scapegoats. With 53 seconds left on the clock, they scored a game-winning touchdown on a hectic fourth-and-12 bullet pass. To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, please contact Sarah Mirk,smirk@revealnews.org. 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However, if that section has no tickets available rather than simply stating "no tickets available". You must contact the He is the recipient of two Edward R. Murrow Awards, a National Headliner Award, an Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award, and two first-place awards for feature storytelling from the Society of Professional Journalists and Best of the West. No, none of us got tickets. This website is not intended for viewing or usage by European Union citizens. Others sell so-called speculative tickets, which the brokers do not actually yet possess. Valentine filed a complaint with North Carolinas attorney general. READ: Foreign websites steal our content, Click Here to read other Ripoff Reports on Seat Geek. Bot operators began their full-scale assault on the industry more than a decade ago. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigations delivered straight to your inbox. This and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.. Top Class Actions is a legal news source It auto suggests is a different section without indicating that is what it's doing. Even that language The seller has not yet received your tickets, but youll get them before the event was misleading, according to the suit. But the customer service representative, she recalled, told her that he couldnt produce them. My brothers were trying to do it. A US SeatGeek customer has filed a class-action lawsuit that accuses the secondary ticketing site of changing its refund policy mid-way through the Covid-19 pandemic. Seatgeek blocked my use of 2 Tickets for $510. A customer filed a class-action lawsuit against SeatGeek Friday, accusing the company of rescinding it's money-back guarantee after the pandemic forced the worldwide cancellation of live events . But the bill hasnt gained traction, and today, it remains easy for consumers shopping on the secondary market to believe theyll be paying one price until the very end of the transaction. 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