Joan S.

The first time we bought StubHub tickets they were outright forgeries. We got our money back but only after arriving at the event and being embarrassed and disappointed, and spending over an hour on the phone with foreign call centers. The second time an envelope with the return address on Dean Martin Drive appeared at our house, something in my mind screamed "scam." My husband forgot my ban on StubHub and had purchased tickets to a musical show at a theater in nearby Washington, DC. The tickets looked real, but had a $0 value on them and I could not find the seats on the seating chart. I called the theater to verify the tickets, and after a long, long time dialing different numbers, was put in touch with the VIP Seats Manager. The tickets are real, part of a subscription package, but they are not supposed to be resold. The manager said we could use them, but indicated that she tries to weed out buyers who resell these VIP tickets. She said the tickets were actually a package that includes a parking pass to the garage attached to the theater, a special entrance, and several other nice perks. We did not get information on the package with the two tickets we got, and certainly did not get the parking pass. Calls to StubHub are difficult, so I thought I'd try the chat function on their website. I got an English-as-a-second-language "listener" who did not listen to me at all. I asked that StubHub contact the seller to see where the parking pass was. After a lot of back and forth and the "listener" saying no several different ways, she indicated that the seller was one of their very large resellers of tickets and that the seller only has to send what it listed in the ad, so the reseller fulfilled his/her/it's duty sending the two tickets. The takeaway from this experience is any time you get theater tickets on StubHub, verify them with the theater itself. The theater manager said that they had a party of eight with $1000 of forged tickets purchased on StubHub last week. My tickets are valid, but had I not been on the phone for 45 minutes to contact the VIP coordinator at the theater, I would not have known about the other benefits that go along with the ticket or that the tickets are sold by subscription only. It's really too much time and trouble going through StubHub in my opinion. Theater is such a personal experience and it's better to buy the tickets through the theater box office for the next show you're interested in rather than purchase a possibly forged ticket, go through the rigmarole of verifying it, and possibly not receive all the benefits that go with the seat (in my case parking on a certain level and a parking pass).