YOU ARE BUYING A BAR CODE-NOT A TICKET - A Cautionary Tale
(For Harry Chiti, who lacks points. Among other things)
So, Harry’s friend did not want to renew his 2018-2019 pair hoop season tickets in the blue section, so he offers them to Harry, at cost.
Harry finds 2 friends who will split the season; Harry and friend K get the MSU game.
Harry follows the secondary market and decided he wanted to sell his MSU ticket, which would pay the cost of his entire season package.
K said he was going to the game regardless but surrendered to greed and allowed Harry to post both tickets on the Vivid website, planning to just buy a single ticket for himself, later, after prices fell.
Harry succeeded and got more than his cost back, even after the outrageous fees.
The original, cardboard tickets were sent to Okemos and picked up the Thursday before the game.
K bought a single on stub hub after he parked for the Sunday game.
Harry thought Spartan fans bought the tickets, due to the Okemos address, but K checked out the seats and said the guys there were participating in the Maize Out.
So far, so good.
Sunday night, Vivid sends Harry an email stating that entry was denied on the tickets, that he was subject to up to a 200% penalty on top of the ticket price unless he could explain his way out of it.
Ouch.
An email exchange commenced with the ticket office.
Which initially said you should have used our official partner, Stub Hub, but finally allowed that the tickets, actually, the bar code, had been sold on Stub Hub the Friday before the game.
Harry was able to establish that the tickets were picked up Thursday, that the purchaser must then have used the bar codes to sell the tickets on Stub Hub.
And then took, or had someone else take, the physical tickets to Crisler so that entry would be denied and they could eliminate the cost of the tickets they had re-sold.
Happy ending for Harry, after a couple of weeks, as Vivid forked over the funds.
During that time, K checked with a friend from his old scalping days, who was still in the ticket broker business.
He said the bar code is all you need. The sites authenticate the tickets per the bar code, and that is what they sell. The actual physical tickets do not have to be involved in the transaction.
Nor is there any check with the original ticket owner on whether she authorized reselling.
He added that people who take a picture of tickets that includes the bar code and post that online, say, Craig’s List, have those tickets stolen all the time.
Someone just reads the bar code and puts them up for sale through one of the websites.
So, Harry is puzzled as to why the University partners with a site that could easily verify with the record owner of the tickets if the sale is authorized, but refuses to do so.
That would have prevented the problem in his case.
Of course, that would take time and hence cost money but Harry would think the University would be able to partner with a site that would protect the season ticket holders.
Seems like a simple software issue.
Sure, would be difficult to sell tickets right before game time, but, so what?
So, the way things stand, you could be at the Big House looking to buy cheap tickets on game day.
You look at a pair, and fork over the agreed price.
Neither you nor the seller would know whether someone else looked at the tickets earlier, memorized the bar code, and sold them online while the seller was trying to dump them on the street.
Or, they might already have been scanned and passed back through the fence.
Or, sold in advance as a printout of the all-important bar code.
Ah, Harry thinks, waxing nostalgic for the old days of an actual ticket stub that was torn in two when you entered and left you with a nice souvenir of attending the event, things just ain't what they used to be.
April 25th, 2019 at 12:49 PM ^
As a Detroit Tigers fan, I found it very interesting that you chose Harry Chiti for your tale, as Harry was the backup catcher for the Tigers near the end of his career.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/c/chitiha01.shtml
These days, Harry (who passed away in 2002) is better known as St Peter's assistant at the Pearley Gates. (edit: this fact generally only better known to former members of the Worldcrossing NPGWH Detroit Tigers Forum)
that is why my friend chose it as his avatar on this site
:)
... because Harry Chiti will be there to welcome us, just as he was recently for Keith Jackson?
:-)
Or because your friend is a former NPGWH Detroit Tigers Forum member?
Goddamn, I wondered if that username was you....
(Nightwing here, haha)
Harry Chiti: "a good handler of pitchers."
April 25th, 2019 at 12:58 PM ^
tl;dr - don't go to games. Instead, watch at home in HD on your 75" 4K TV.
Kidding aside, good article and an educational word of warning, thanks for posting!
I'll clarify a few items for you. It actually does make sense for the university to have a specific resale partner. When you sell a ticket on StubHub for a UM game, you enter the barcode from your ticket and the StubHub system regenerates a new barcode and invalidates the old one. They are integrated into the university's system, which is why they partnered with them. They are the only resale website that is able to do this. Any season ticket holder can also transfer their tickets to anyone else and have a PDF created with new barcodes also. This is the way you would want to do it in the future if it's a Craigslist type of deal with someone you don't know or barely know.
Physical hard stock tickets definitely do not matter anymore. They may be prettier but in no way guarantee entry. I don't think anyone took the tickets to Crisler to have entry denied. They either used them for entry themselves, or likely sold them to someone else. Once tickets sell on StubHub and the buyer enters the barcodes, the originial ticket barcode is invalid. No need to go to Crisler or anything of the sort. Hopefully that clears up a few things for you.
Wow dude, I came in here to post this and you did it even more succinctly than I was about to.
I'll just add that it's a controversial solution to have only one aftermarket ticket service be able to purchase exclusive rights for barcode-regeneration resales, and will probably get challenged by StubHub's competitors--you'll need a lawyer to explain why and how, but I would guess it falls under anti-trust law: Michigan is clearly partnering with StubHub to restrict the market for the purposes of increasing scarcity--and thus driving up the price--for the product they're selling. As a public institution, it would also make sense that Michigan should be required to release the protocols for how they process barcode exchanges to entities that can prove they're honest resale markets. Essentially, if other companies want to offer a service that cuts down on fraudulent ticket resale and they can't because Michigan and StubHub want to own the only means of non-fraudulent ticket resale, I don't think M/StubHub have much of a case.
From a non-legal standpoint, they're essentially selling ticket owners' right to exchange their good on the free market. On one hand it's not that different from, say, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where they sell options and futures for the commodities market. On the other hand, CME is heavily regulated. You don't see StubHub having to go to the government to ask permission to allow Michigan basketball games to go on sale, and with sports tickets there doesn't seem to be a huge need to centralize, given that the programs that issue the tickets should be perfectly capable of processing online ticket transactions.
I think it's safe to assume the contract is an exclusive contract, meaning Michigan can't partner with any other secondary sites. I'd guess StubHub pays big bucks for that. That's why they can verify that StubHub transactions are valid and not ones from Vivid or any other site.
I got burned once from buying from a non-verified site (although Vivid is very well known). I now find what site the team/school is partnered with. It wasn't worth all of the hassle to try to get my money back.
So, how was VIVID able to sell the tickets on their website? Although in this case the physical tickets were snail mailed or fed x'd
April 26th, 2019 at 10:16 AM ^
People who have tickets are able to post their tickets on whichever site they chose. Michigan is only partnered with one of those sites, so they can only verify the purchases from THAT site (StubHub). I'm sure a majority of the Vivid transactions are valid and there are no issues, but clearly it does happen where the tickets won't scan and then it becomes a nightmare.
I guess the counterpoint to this is that Stubhub bought the rights for the exclusivity of the aftermarket but it doesn’t prevent you from selling on other sites - it just doesn’t guarantee there won’t be fraud there.
thanks, I knew there had to be more to this than I/we knew about, and was hoping to elicit this type of information. :)
I got good advice here at this site (I think from an article Seth had written) and have followed it ever since. Whenever I scalp tickets day of I have the scalper walk me in and after the ticket scans as approved I pay them. If they are reluctant to agree to these terms, find another scalper.
Absolutely. There is no other way if buying on the street.
I think I also wrote that most scalpers with tickets that aren't fraudulent won't agree to this, especially far from the stadium, because you could turn around and be like "sorry dude" and walk into the stadium and since the tickets are already scanned he can't do much about it.
What I look for when buying off the street is someone who's going in themselves. I met some cool dudes once who were getting rid of a ticket and were cooking chili, so I bought the ticket on condition I could try the chili. I tailgated with them for a bit, walked in, sat with the wife of the guy who was making the chili (he didn't go to the game), and then brought them a copy of HTTV the next home game.
Another thing to note is that the system mostly works now because very few people are fraudulent. You can get in big trouble, with the program and legally. When I hear stories of tickets that were already scanned, often there are multiple people who all bought the same bar code. The scammer will use a fake online ID, post a bunch of tickets all at once on multiple sites at a price well below the going rate. Sometimes it's a whole group of tickets together--like suddenly a whole row against MSU opens up for $30 less than the other tickets around them. You can bet what happened is somebody on the way to the game decided to take a shot of their mega ticket pack and posted it on Social Media. The scammers pull the bar codes, list the tickets, get what they can, then disappear, and when the big group arrives suddenly they discover their tickets have been scanned.
If you hang around the main (escalator) entrance to Crisler right after tipoff you can sometimes see a crowd gathering of 8-ish people and a ticket person holding all of their printed tickets. Michigan basketball is understanding--they'll often try to fit the people in somewhere rather than tell a bunch of fans to piss off.
I've got bad news for you. Michigan's solution will be to go all digital.
Thus basically forcing you to use StubHub and their 20% fees to sell tickets. And spoiler alert I'm sure Michigan gets a cut for being the official partner with stubhub.
Most teams have given up and just decided you're buying bar codes. The Tigers said they were going all digital in January. After taking my money as season ticket holder in bad faith in August.
So when I try to sell my tickets behind the plate, its almost impossible without Stub hub and after taking a loss on every ticket I sell because of product, Stubhub takes their cut. Congrats, The Tigers just profited off the same ticket twice.
I raised holy hell with my rep to get tickets printed and succeeded. It makes it so much easier to sell to friends and coworkers.
But the teams will hide behind fraud and "safety". Meanwhile being a season ticket holder becomes a stupidier decision.
quick hypocrisy story regarding universities and stubhub.
I graduated from Michigan in 1998, was put on the season ticket waitlist, then finally got my season tickets in 2001, the year I left for grad school in Chapel Hill naturally. I had season tickets from 2001 to 2015 and only lived in Michigan two of those seasons. I mostly sold whatever I couldn't use to family/friends but on a few occassions tried to make a few bucks.
In 2007 we hosted ND and OSU. I lived in LA then so in mid August I sold my pair of ND tickets for $700 and OSU pair for $1200. Absurd prices to be sure, and I ended up going to both games still for face sitting with a friend. A few weeks after I sold them I got a big envelope from the U of M ticket office. It was a letter telling me that I illegally sold my tickets on a 3rd party website for more than I paid for them and included a dozen pages of my different stubhub listings. It asked me to explain why I did that and why I should be able to keep my season tickets. So I sent back an apologetic letter begging to keep my tickets.
Fast forward a few years and every major U is in bed with Stubhub. Funny how $$$ changes everything...
"...going to both games for FACE SITTING with a friend." This either needs a comma or a hyphen, depending on whether the tickets were a good price or you were very good friends!
Haha, you should've written back and said "kiss my ass!"
ONE ADDITIONAL PIECE OF CAUTION:
NEVER post pictures of your tickets online when you get them. With the quality of many digital cameras, there may be enough resolution (depending on the pic and camera) to lift those Barcode ID numbers and post tickets for sale.
April 26th, 2019 at 11:07 AM ^
Posting a picture to show you have the actual tickets in hand is fine so long as you blur out the barcode and its corresponding numbers! MS Paint will do the trick.
To Rob F: I am neither of those guys you referenced. To the guy who suggested attorneys get involved, both Harry (me) & K (obviously the koklaw who created this diary) are attorneys. I believe that Vivid caved when I informed them that we were attorneys. I also let them know I was an assistant AG.
Finally, the Tigers are not all digital on tickets. My daughter and I attended a Tigers game & bought two tickets at the box office and were handed actual paper tickets.
Both koklaw & I will never sell our tickets online again. Even though we basically paid for the rest of the season with our sale, it's not worth the aggravation.
April 29th, 2019 at 11:27 AM ^
Thanks to all who contribute(d) to this valuable post.
Good stuff!
great to know. The days of scalpers at the stadium are over. The real scalpers are the online sites who now take a cut of every entertainment venue needing a ticket. Can't get tickets at the theater anymore or tickets ahead of time at the stadium without them taking a slice for no work. It's a tax on entertainment that does not go to our cities, states, or country.
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