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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

Why are they set up this way? The purchase should confer ownership at the time of purchase, or within a reasonable time afterwards, in such a way that it is physically impossible for the seller to take back ownership without the cooperation of the buyer.

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> in such a way that it is physically impossible for the seller to take back ownership without the cooperation of the buyer.

I'm not sure how this is logistically possible without the seller sending SH tickets when he or she wants to sell them, in which case we'd just be reading an article about how SH accidentally sent out $6k in tickets that were never paid for.

Why would you need to send them to SH? It would go like: buyer pays, seller gives buyer tickets. "Give" may mean mailing physical tickets, or an electronic transfer.

It sounds like there are some ticket issuers which make this impossible, but I don't see how giving tickets to SH makes any difference.

Because someone needs to hold them in escrow, otherwise it's a 'he said she said' argument. How would SH know whether or not the seller actually withheld the tickets, if they've never seen proof that the tickets even exist? That or they just assume the buyer is always right and take a hit.

You're right, for paper tickets there needs to be a trusted third party that handles them. There's no need to send the tickets in advance, but once the sale occurs, you'd really have to send them through StubHub or another third party.

I see no reason StubHub couldn't do this, of course. They could even spin it as a feature: the seller never learns your address and your privacy is protected!

For electronic tickets, whatever service sells the ticket could act as the trusted third party. Get the seller to provide whatever confirmation/order/transfer numbers are appropriate and check them with the ticket issuer's system.

  You're right, for paper tickets there needs to
  be a trusted  third party that handles them

Stubhub does no such thing. For physical tickets, seller ships to buyer. For PDF tickets, seller just uploads them; the upload constitutes delivery.

For events that Stubhub lacks hooks into the ticketing system (mostly baseball), they do nothing to vet tickets. Buyers are advised to create a listing in TicketExchange (or whomever is the official marketplace) to (1) validate the tickets and (2) lock them to prevent forwarding or TicketExchange sale by a prior holder.

I know they don't, I'm saying they should. They are currently vulnerable to bad sellers screwing over buyers, but that's just because of how they chose to structure their business, not an inherent problem.

Sometimes Ticketmaster takes a long while to print the tickets. So even if the seller has to send in the tickets as soon as possible (which is in fact the case), there's going to be some period where the transaction has occurred and the seller can't possibly send the tickets to the buyer.

I think Stubhub has non-delivery penalties, but probably not enough to cancel out this windfall.

Sure, "some period" is fine. When you buy stuff on eBay, for example, your product might not even ship for a couple of days.

In this case, though, it was a month later and they still hadn't been delivered. That's no longer reasonable.

It's possible the ticket issuers won't issue tickets even in that timeframe. StubHub's web site has warnings that the tickets might not be available until 72 hours before the event. In which case they either need to forbid reselling such tickets, or have massive penalties for breaking the contract.

For Lakers games and season ticket holders, TicketMaster doesn't 'e-print' the ticket until 96 hours before tip off, to try to minimize ticket resale (which it doesn't, or only marginally, because they're counting on people not being able to keep track of that - which StubHub helpfully does).

The 49ers did that this season (72 hours)... one of many ways they pissed off the season ticket base.

Age old problem. It is why PayPal exists. Arbitrage on transactions where trust is a problem. SH could warranty to make a comparable ticket available on any consummated transaction - probably they should given the reputational loss they've incurred.

They currently guarantee "comparable replacement tickets or send you a refund." It sounds like in practice they try for the "comparable replacement tickets" first... except that according to them there were none in this case, because all the remaining tickets were really expensive!

Eesh. Comparable replacement tickets refers to a similar seat at the same event - price really isn't a factor. Nice piece of acrobatics on their lawyer's part tho.

Yeah, sometimes you just have to sit back and be impressed, even if it's ridiculous.

A lot of tickets are just in time to the seller. When I have been to the Kentucky Derby for example, I bought 2 day tickets on StubHub that will not ship to the seller until 2 weeks or so before the event. I then resold the other day on the ticket either on StubHub or Ebay.

I imagine for some events there is this entire chain of sell/buy/sell/buy going on.

Stubhub can charge a violating seller.

Or, try to. Stubhub actually has a huge fraud exposure. The seller is paid within days of the buyer receiving the tickets, even if the event is much later.

If the tickets were counterfeit in the first place, or invalidated later, Stubhub can only hope that the credit card the seller signed up with is still valid... or ever was. Meanwhile, the buyer gets a refund (eventually) or a substitute (if prices have dropped).

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