Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

I'd never had a problem dealing with Stubhub before; the tickets just showed up when they were supposed to and it made all the fees they charge more palatable. This time I was really concerned they wouldn't arrive, even though they were being shipped 2-day air. First I tried searching Stubhub's website to see if there was any kind of guarantee in case the tickets didn't arrive. There was, but if the day of the game comes and you don't have any tickets, there's not much they can do except issue a refund. Next I emailed their customer service. I received a prompt reply stating that they were experiencing high volume and couldn't promise they'd respond within 12 hours as their site says.

I gave them 24 hours; hearing nothing I tried calling customer service. The number connected me to a voicemail box asking me to leave a name, number, and description of my problem and they would answer within 24 hours. I decided to give them 2 hours this time, then resorted to pressing "0" hoping that it would get me to a live person.

This is around the time I began writing this entry in my head. I was frustrated and all I wanted was to cancel the order I'd made, buy different tickets, and hope that seller was more responsive and would ship them right away. After about a half-hour on hold, I did reach a live person and told her I wanted to cancel my order and place a new one. Sensing my frustration, she asked whether I'd still like my original seats if she could have them shipped out right away. She called the seller, left a message for them, and emailed them an overnight shipping authorization (all while I was still on the line). She said to call back later that night if the tickets still hadn't been shipped.

I did receive the tickets in time, but the problem didn't have to go all the way to a phone agent. Stubhub could have saved money by responding to my email promptly, by adding live chat to their site, or by having safeguards in place that recognize when tickets haven't been shipped weeks after they were ordered. They were very close to losing me as a customer, and very close to being ripped in this entry. Fortunately, there was a happy ending and I'm not a dissatisfied customer.

Interesting Sidenote: When I was at the game, a team employee asked if we'd answer a few questions about our experience. The first one was "on a scale of 1 to 5, how passionate a Red Sox fan are you?" I told her to put down zero, since I'm a Yankees fan who was nice enough to take his girlfriend to see her favorite team. The girl taking the survey muttered something like "I'll put you down as a 3" and moved on to the next question.