How NOT to Sell Your Sports, Concert or Event Tickets on StubHub

This article was supposed to be titled How to Use StubHub to Sell Your Unneeded Event Tickets. That was before I was informed by StubHub that the seats I was putting on the market were already on the market. This is despite the fact that I was holding the stiff, shiny cardboard tickets in my hand at that moment.

I got on the telephone and after a half an hour's wait, spoke to a Real Live Person. Real Live Person was tired and a little harried and very condescending in her assumption that I was simply incapable of correct data entry. She "led" me through the steps again with that type of voice - you know the one I'm referring to - of supposed patience tinged with superiority. I was almost happy to finally inform her that a large red exclamation point and red rectangle filled my screen, declaring that our tickets were already for sale on StubHub.

Real Live Person's voice changed a little bit, but just a little. This was obviously a glitch, some malfunction that I'd probably led the machine to experience. In the background now I heard the muted "click-click-Click, backspace, Click" of her looking up our tickets. Then there were several "Click, CLICK, CLICKs" and her voice changed again. A lot. So much so that Mr. Baseball raised an eyebrow and had a seat on the couch beside me.

"Do you have possession of the tickets right now?" she asked me. I think her voice quavered a little bit.

"In my hands as we speak," I answered, "You want the barcodes?"

"Uh, of course. This is something our company simply does not tolerate! How did they think they'd get by with this? Sellers aren't paid until the buyers receive their tickets..." Her voice sort of faded in and out, as did my attention at this point.

As she wasn't running for any office I was voting for, I finally interrupted her promises of justice to come. "Look," I cut her off, "Exactly when am I going to be able to put the tickets that we own for sale on your site? We don't have a great deal of time for you to sort this out. Take the pretender's tickets off-line and let me post ours. Without your cut because of this issue." Now, she was quiet. Too quiet. "Hello?" I said.

More clicks and CLICKS were going on in the background when Real Live Person gave some promise of a suit calling us tomorrow, Monday at the latest. Why we needed to talk to a suit to sell our own tickets on their site, I have no clue. Maybe it's because I'm insisting that we do it for free. Probably because Mr. Baseball was already speaking of calling the university ticket office about the issue the next day, after it opened for business. She asked us not to. At least until the suit called us.

So, anybody out there interested in ACC football tickets?