A Vancouver man who bought two tickets to Sunday’s USA vs. Canada hockey match, but didn’t receive the tickets he wanted, is suing a Vancouver ticket broker for $60,000.
Patrick O’Brien filed the lawsuit against Allstar Tickets last week in a Canadian court before the game, because he claimed the company did not deliver the two center-ice tickets he paid $4,600 for.
O’Brien claimed that finding two replacement center-ice tickets to the game, some of the most sought-after of the Vancouver Olympics, would have cost $60,000, according to CBC News. O’Brien was refunded his money but sued anyway.
Allstar Tickets, which reportedly did not deny having the tickets, declined to honor the purchase because, as a way of protecting itself, required O’Brien to provide photocopies of the credit card used and a valid ID before it would process the order. For ticket sales of more than $1,000, the company demands customers provide that information in an effort to avoid possible fraud. Despite multiple requests via phone and email, O’Brien reportedly never provided the information.
“In this industry you can get a lot of people doing fraudulent ticket buys online, and we want to protect our customers as well as ourselves,” Allstar Tickets President Scott Ayre told CBC News.
In a separate incident last month, only a couple of weeks before the start of the Vancouver Olympics, scandal struck when major brokers and hundreds of customers were left without tickets after Atlanta, GA-based ticket company Action Seating was allegedly cheated out of thousands of tickets in a suspected fraud case. Action Seating was reportedly responsible for providing the tickets to the brokers, which had taken orders for the inventory.
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strange that all star tickets does not require that information when they sell on ebay
eBay takes the risk at that point. If you are selling straight to a client, you have to protect yourself. If replacement tickets coist half of the $60,000 the Canuck said they did, he probably made a bad sale. I know I would take a reputation hit for upwards of $20,000.
Allstar busted out on another broker at the olympics as well
It’s not about reputation it’s about honor and decency. If those tickets would have dropped to $2000 you can bet All Star Tickets wouldn’t give him any of his money back.
“YOU WOULD TAKE THE HIT…”
WTF (and I do not mean why the face)!!! Anyone in, or associated with, the ticketing industry takes “the hit” with you A**H***!!! Maybe $20k is your year and pays for your car, mortgage, food and baby-mamas. In my world, that’s a day. Regardless, without your integrity, you are and have nothing. Who raised you, Madoff? Where are your parents – jail??? Wouldn’t they be proud!!!
In every business there are people of lesser integrity, there are crooks, and there are poeple that do the right thing. This industry begins with a besmirsched integrity mark and for you to outwardly, flagrantly, pronounce that you are at the least not trustworthy, or possibly criminal is just disgusting.
I do appreciate your honesty in stating your position, many do what you say and just don’t have the stones to admit it. However, IF we are to survive and thrive in the face of ever-tightening regulation, better excluding technologies (i.e. Garth Brooks/Wynn and they sold-out), then we have to become and demonstrate integrity and value, not greed and duplicity.
I’m talking about the spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law.
Step up, or step off.
I bought tickets from this company a long time ago for an Eric Clapton concert. It was months before the concert and they accepted my payment. The night before the concert they told me my tickets were not available and I had to pay $40 more for for different seats for the same concert. I felt my hands were tied and I was forced to pay them. My impression is they collect a lot of money for tickets that initially may or may not exist and if they cannot get a hold of the tickets they will refund the money. I also think, like Wiseguys and other similar companies, they use spambots or other illegal methods to buy as much as the inventory possible before reselling them.
They also threaten to ‘blacklist’ you on ebay if you make any negative comment about them.