 Looks like I'm going to have to actually fly out to Vegas to deal with this problem and I am not looking forward to it whatsoever. In this video, I'm going to tell you guys how I lost over $1,600 selling Bruno Mars tickets all because I made one simple mistake. Stay tuned, find out what it was and how you can make sure you don't do it too. Let's get started. What's up guys, welcome back. My name is Shrazz. Here on Thumbs Up Run where we talk about buying tickets, selling tickets to make sure that you have all the fun with your tickets. Today's story though is unfortunately not that fun, but to tell it properly, we're going to start all the way back at the beginning of October 21st, 2021. This was the day Bruno Mars was going to have a presale for a bunch of his December shows and I decided, hey, I'm going to go and try and buy some of these tickets so I can make a little bit of money, have a great time. I took this information that I had, I found the presale code, I posted it in my ticket discord group. Details down below if you guys are so interested and that's kind of where it all began. I bought some tickets. I actually bought over $2,600 worth of tickets. I spent a total of $2,963.65 for Bruno Mars. Nothing too exciting here. Tickets said they're going to be shipped via hard stock. So I said, okay, fine, I'll get them probably about two weeks before the event takes place, ship them out when they're sold. It all seemed very standard. So I went ahead, listed the tickets, sold a bunch of them in the next coming weeks and then it was just a matter of waiting for them to come in to fulfill those sales. At this point, we're at the end of November. We had sold all of our tickets for a total after fees of $3,736.33, bringing us to a grand total of just over $777 of profit. You know, I thought that was pretty much the right way to do things. Didn't even think about it until we got close to December. So as we got to December 1st, waiting in the mail, checking the email box, didn't see anything there. I said, oh, you know, that's fine. Maybe it'll be there tomorrow. December 2nd rolls around. Check the mail box, nothing. I figure maybe on the Monday it'll show up. So I checked the mail on Monday, December 6th, nada, nothing. Started to get a little bit worried, but again, you know, these things, they can take some time to get shipped, especially coming from the US. Things aren't always super fast. So you know, you just got to just wait a little bit, I figure. Nothing, nothing wrong with that. And so I waited a bit more, waited a bit more. We get to Friday now, December 10th. Tickets, nowhere to be found. And now things are getting a little dicey now. We're getting a little bit nervous. There's no tickets yet. We've got a week before the event takes place, December 17th. And if I can't deliver these tickets, I'm going to be out a lot of dollars. So what did I do? I reached out to a few other brokers that I know who had also bought tickets for this event. Just ask them, you know, did you get your tickets yet? As we got to the end of the week, December 10th, a bunch of people were saying, yes, I was receiving tickets. I did get them in the mail. And I'm thinking to myself, well, if they got them, maybe I'll get them on the Monday. You know, I'm in Canada, events all the way in Vegas. It takes a while for tickets to travel that far. Maybe they'll show up on Monday. So Monday rolls around December 13th. Nothing. Still nothing. Everybody else I've talked to, they already have their tickets at this point and I'm getting nervous. I only got a day left. Make sure these tickets actually get out in time or else they're not going to make it to the buyer. And I'm going to be out a lot of money. Now, I give myself one more day, December 14th. If I can get my tickets by December 14th, then there's nothing to worry about. I'll give myself one more day, 24 hours for those tickets to show up before we go into panic mode. Ask my family to go check the mailbox. Nothing. Nothing's in the mailbox. There's nothing there. And now we're almost really screwed at this point. So, okay, let's troubleshoot you. Today, we are not having a lot of fun because we have some problems. Problem we ran into is that I bought some tickets for Bruno Mars. I sold some tickets for Bruno Mars and then the tickets never showed up for Bruno Mars. As you may or may not know already, if you sell some tickets and you cannot deliver, generally there is a 100% to 200% penalty, potentially even higher, if tickets cannot be fulfilled in the sections that you sold those seats for. So, it can be pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good. Be expensive if you cannot fulfill those seats. And we got to figure out how to get those 11 seats from the box office to the buyers. Therefore, we're going to be doing something called special delivery. Special delivery is basically an option that a seller has when they're listing their tickets. If they're unsure of what delivery method they're going to have to be able to get those tickets to the buyer. Sometimes, tickets may come as hard stock. Other times, it can come as mobile delivery. Other times, they might have to be picked up at will call. There's a whole bunch of different options that are available for sellers when they are listing tickets. And so, special delivery kind of covers all of them, just in case tickets aren't going to show up until the last possible second. And a lot of different ticket exchanges, they offer this because they know there are sellers who sometimes are buying tickets from all sorts of different places and they just don't know when they're going to get enhanced. So they got to give themselves an option just in case it takes, you know, a hand-delivered ticket to make sure they get to the buyer in time. But it's up to the seller to make sure that they cover all those expenses at the end to get those tickets to the buyer. So if you have to fly all the way out to Vegas to deliver those tickets in person, you got to do it. What are you doing? I am trying to solve this Bruno Mars problem. And then I contacted Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster was like, hey, we can change the wheel call for you. And then I'm like, no, you have an option to change the mobile tickets. They're like, no, we're not going to do that for you. We're going to be difficult. Looks like I'm going to have to actually fly out to Vegas to deal with this problem. And I am not looking forward to it whatsoever. Oh dear. Oh dear is right. Looking through my sales, though, I realized I only had one order that was through StubHub. The others were all through other exchanges that did offer special delivery. And so I contacted all the other exchanges say I'll hand deliver them in person in Vegas. And they all said, yeah, sure, no problem. Not a worry at all. That's 100% fine. Go ahead, set up your orders that way. Here's all the information, contact everybody, arrange to meet up close to the venue and everyone will be happy. So we averted the major crisis, but we still had one more exchange to deal with and that was StubHub. StubHub is very, very particular, I would say, with ensuring that they maintain their standard delivery options. UPS delivery, mobile transfer, mobile screenshot. Those are generally what StubHub allows. StubHub does not allow will call delivery tickets. They are very much anti anytime the buyer and seller have any communication and meeting up in person. And so what did I do? I contacted StubHub. I called them. I pleaded them. I said, hello, hello, please help me. I am desperate here. Okay. I don't know what else I can do. Tickets are not going to be available in time for me to deliver by the UPS delivery date, which was that day, December 14th. What are my options? Is there anything I can do? And the agent said, yeah, you know, you can go ahead. Here is the buyer's email address. Go ahead, contact them directly to arrange delivery of the tickets. Again, the agent at StubHub, whom I called, said, contact the buyer directly. And here is their contact information. Now upon hearing this, some red flags went off my head saying, you know, this doesn't sound right. StubHub has never allowed this before. Why would they change their policy all of a sudden? So I basically go back to the agent and say, hey, are you sure this is what you want me to do? You want me to reach out to the buyer directly to arrange delivery of the tickets? And they just said, yes, yes, of course. At this point, I did not question anything. I reached out to the buyer. I sent them a quick email. I said, hello, here is all the information I received from StubHub. They said to reach out to you directly to arrange for delivery of the tickets. Let's meet up in person in Vegas to get these tickets to you. And they said, OK, I'm not 100% sure on this, but let's roll with it in this case. And I said, all right, fantastic, wonderful, excellent. Let's book a trip to Vegas. So then I scurry on over to the interwebs, go on Air Canada, book some tickets on points, book a hotel, get all that sorted out. And next thing you know, in two days, I'm flying off to Vegas, trying to get these tickets to those buyers. Had to get my COVID test. Had to get all that other travel-y stuff sorted out before I could get out there. But, you know, nothing, nothing too wild. I mean, this whole trip is already ridiculous. But then I just went into my phone and I said, OK, let's put in Las Vegas. Take a look at what the weather is like. How is it possible that Vegas is colder than Toronto and Ottawa? Like, what, what, what is this? What's happening? I don't understand. So as you can see, it is now the next day, nice and early, still around 7 AM. We got ourselves a trip to get started on. So let's go to Vegas. Let's learn a few things to try and make sure this doesn't happen again. But maybe we kind of want to happen again. Who knows? Let's find out. Next thing you know, I'm actually in Vegas, December 17th. I arrived there around 1 PM and I'm starting to find out where my hotel is, find out where the venue is, get in contact with everybody, arrange for all the delivery of tickets. Who wants tickets at this place? Who wants tickets at that place? Who's going to show up on time? Who's going to show up early? Who's going to show up late? All that jazz, I had to sort it all out on that one day. The fact that we were able to even pick these things up, get it all done with, I mean, it's, it's, it's a miracle in and of itself. But time to breathe for a bit, one more delivery to go. And then we are done. So finally we are done 9, 10 PM. They cut it a bit late, to be honest. So they're maybe at 8. They got here by 9, 10. I mean, I don't know, whatever. No, I promise. All tickets are delivered. No more Bruno Mars for me. Let's get out of here. I need some sleep. Instead of now making about $770 profit after all my travel expenses, we made about $470 profit at the end of all this traveling, running around, running around with my head cut off. But you know what? At the end of the day, we did it. And I wake up the next day basically ready to head home. And this is where we run into the next major issue. You thought this was over? No, no, no. Not yet. We just got an email. It's currently 5 AM. Okay. I got an email. It says my order was canceled because I never delivered it. Well, I mean, I'm here. Tickets are gone. I know I gave it to the person. So now we got to do some investigations when we get back because I ain't about this traveling and not being paid life. It's looking at my phone just now. It looks like they've already even charged me. I can't, I can't deal with this right now. I got to get to the airport. I'm going to call some people. We're going to get this resolved. This, I have no words. No words. Just thinking about it just again brings back all those infuriating feelings. I'm too tired at that point too stressed out to even think about it. I just got to get to the airport so I can, you know, breathe and relax just a little. Just want to relax just a little bit before I can actually kind of deal with this issue. It is way too early to be outside. Also cold. I don't understand. When did Vegas start getting so cold? Was it always like this? Prompt for another day. Back to real cold, I guess. So I'm like, okay, fine. I get to the airport. I get to the lounge. I get some food in me, feeling a bit more zen, a bit more calm, a bit more relaxed. And that's when I then approach the idea of calling StubHub back to say, hey, what's going on with this order? Why was it canceled? I want my money. So I contact StubHub and they say, okay, here, send us all your information. And then we'll get back to you either later today or later tomorrow, sometime in the next, you know, 24 or 48 hours. I'm like, fine. This is all after they put me on hold for about 30 minutes while I was waiting for them to tell me this information. But besides one, this is why it's so important to always keep notes of everything you do, proof of everything you take pictures of things, keep records of all your stuff. Cause then when you're trying to run into problems like this, it can save you a lot of hassle when things start going wrong. Should all be resolved, but we'll see once we hopefully land in Montreal. So I send them all the information I have. I say, yeah, let's put the buyer. Here's what I did to drop off the tickets. And I just kind of left at that. I said, okay, here you go. Send my money. I'm just laddy dot that point, head to my plane and hop on a flight to Montreal, where I'll catch my next flight to Toronto and eventually be back home. End of story. Unfortunately, not so simple. I landed in Montreal. I checked my phone once I've landed. And it says that unfortunately, after reviewing all this information, you left these tickets at will call. And unfortunately, because will call is a non delivery method with stub hub, it violates our terms of service. Therefore, we cannot reverse this penalty that we have charged you and you will not be paid for the sale at all. Thank you and have a great day. And I am now, again, I'm, I'm starting to lose it now because it's like, what do you mean? You want, you tell me I can do this. Then you say I can't do this. Then you say send me all information. Then you say, no, your permission is no good. I decided not forget it. I can't even think about this right now. I just got to just get home and then we could talk about this because it's too much. It was just, it's too much now. And this is what I come back to. Oh God. This is miserable. Yeah. And then I get back home. Realize my car is covered in snow because when I left, it was, you know, about 10 degrees. And when I got back was like minus 10 degrees with like 15 centimeters of snow in my car because that's normal apparently. So I get back home. I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I'm sick of everything. And I just, I just don't want to do anything. So I decided, okay, fine. I'm going to call it a night. We're not going to look into this issue today. We're going to do it tomorrow because I don't have the bandwidth in my mind to even think about this right now. Next day rolls around. I finally said, okay, let me call Stubhub and see what's the matter. So I call Stubhub, I get an agent. They say, okay, you know what? Let me call the buyer directly. See if they receive the tickets. And if they did, we'll go ahead, reverse the penalties or reverse the charges and we'll get you paid. And I say, you know what? That's awesome. Go ahead, do that. I'll wait on the phone right now for you to go ahead call them directly so that we can get this sorted right away. It puts me on hold. There's some phone calls. There's some phone calls. There's some phone calls. Sends an email. It goes back to me and says, hey, you know, I called them three times. They didn't pick up. I sent them an email. They haven't responded yet. Let me call you back in the next couple of days once we hear a response. And I'm thinking myself, okay, you know what? That's fine. I can live with that. I can live with getting a response back in a couple of days. Everything else has, you know, been a mess already. What's another couple of days on this whole thing? And I just kind of, you know, let it pass my mind because at this point I'm thinking, okay, I think we finally got to the root of the issue here. Things are going to get dealt with. Nothing more to worry about. Let me remind you that this day, when I had called some of that last time, December 19. December 21st rolls around, 24th Christmas. We're now, you know, December 28th, December 29th, December 30th, December 31st. Still no response. Now, as we're getting, you know, December 31st, getting a lot of people starting to ask me about, you know, what's the status of this situation? What happened? Because I had actually been posting this all on Instagram live as it had been happening. So if you haven't followed me on Instagram, just go ahead and do that right now. They were all asking me now, what was the status? What happened? And at this point it's been over a week and a half. I haven't heard back and I have to tell people, you know, I haven't heard back from some of them yet, but I still feel confident they're going to get me my information, they're going to get my money back because it's been, I've given them everything. I've followed all their requirements. I contact them a million times. I don't know what else I can do, but I feel like it just took a matter of time. Let me just call them back one more time and we'll hopefully get this all sorted out. And now it is currently New Year's Eve, 7.25pm. And I'm on hold with StubHub once again. This saga is never going to end. I've been on hold already for 15 minutes so far and counting 35 minutes. And I just got hung up on after an hour and an hour and three minutes, it just hung up. So let's call them back and see what's happening. So I call them back again and I say, hey, you guys just hung up on me. Here's the information. Please look into this. Let me know what you need to do. I say, okay, put you on hold and we'll get back to you. 10 minutes goes by, 20 minutes goes by, 30 minutes goes by. Line dies again. Now I'm losing. I'm beyond living at this point. I call back again. I basically lose it on the first guy that picks up. I say, I can't deal with this anymore. You guys hung up on me three times already. I've called you 4,000 times already in this last couple weeks. I need this sorted and I need this sorted now. I need some supervisor to look into this immediately and get me a response on this issue. I cannot deal with not having this not paid out any longer. So the agent says, okay, I'll take about 24 to 48 hours to review all the phone calls, go through all the notes, figure out what happened and I'll get back to you with an answer. I hang up with the guy, head back down, hang out with the family. 20 minutes later, I get a phone call from StubHub. I go, that was fast. I pick up the phone, ask them, hello, what's going on? What is the status of this order? And the agent says to me, unfortunately, you delivered these tickets as we'll call tickets. This goes against our policies. Therefore, this order will stand as is. I hear that and I basically just tell the agent like, what do you mean? I don't understand why this order isn't counting. I followed exactly what you told me to do. The agent said, contact the buyer, arrange delivery and get the tickets to them, which is exactly what I did. And the agent comes back to me and says, yes, you did. However, you aren't allowed to deliver the tickets via a we'll call method, which is what I ended up doing. I ended up dropping them off at the box office. I left them at we'll call for the buyer because that was the easiest way for them to arrange for a ticket delivery. And that's exactly what I tell them. I say, I followed the instructions that you gave me. I contacted the buyer. I got the tickets delivered to them. We'll call was the only option that was available to me. And so that's what I did. And when I contacted you guys before, you said, go ahead, contact them, arrange for it and make it happen. And the agent comes back and basically says, yes, the agent did tell you to contact the buyer directly, but it was to arrange physical delivery of the tickets via UPS, not via we'll call or any other method. And now I'm just, I'm the, the blood is starting to boil. I tell him, you know what, what do you mean? The agent specifically said to me, arrange for delivery. How am I supposed to interpret what arrange for delivery means? Am I supposed to then just automatically know that it only has to be UPS delivery? I can't do anything else. I just, I can't take basically the word that was taken from the agent and use that information to make sure that I get the tickets to them in a manner that is, that is valid. And the guy basically says yes. Unfortunately, because you didn't follow a policy, we cannot refund the penalty that we've charged you. Basically you're saying, if I get an agent on the phone, they tell me to do something and I follow it, even though I know internally that it's not the thing to do, it's my fault. And the agent basically says yes, that's the way it is. The agent told you to contact the buyer directly. I said, I'm not even supposed to contact the buyer directly. I'm not even supposed to have any contact with them at all. You guys are supposed to do that for me. The agent was supposed to. I had requested for them to arrange for a different method of delivery. And the agent actually gave me the contact information for the buyer to go and reach out to them directly. What do you mean I'm not supposed to contact them and then arrange for a delivery? And they just keep saying back to me. So they say, you know, it unfortunately that agent was in the wrong, but you should have known better because you will agree to the terms of service that are set up within StubHub and not contact the buyers directly and do not deliver tickets via will call. And this goes back and forth for another 20 to 30 minutes, basically going in circles. I'm saying I followed what was told by me and he's saying it doesn't matter what you were told, you can't do things that aren't in the terms of service. And after 30 minutes I was defeated. I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't argue with the guy anymore. We weren't getting anywhere. Basically it always would come back to him saying you didn't follow policy. We can't change the outcome. This is what it is. Very sorry to hear that. We'll contact our agents and make sure that they get better trained to do a better job next time. But because you didn't follow policy, this is what we're going to do. There's nothing else we can do about it. Have a great night. I never told you how much that penalty was, did I? The penalty was for $1,141.72. And that's on top of the payment that I did not receive from StubHub for the sale of another $980.54. With that all that in together, I ended up losing $1,645.59. All because one order wasn't filled according to the terms of service. The worst part is that, yes, I knew that will call was not an option for StubHub for delivery. I've known this for years. And yet, for some reason, in the back of my mind, I thought, if the agent said I can contact the buyer directly to get these tickets fulfilled and that was the only option they gave me, it must be true. And that, my friends, is unfortunately not the case. My mistake was not following the terms of service. Because at the end of the day, an agent can tell you whatever they want. Customer service is only there to help you, but they are not the end-all be-all. The terms of service always are. Just like with any other contract, whatever is in the terms, that is final. I just get hit with the penalty because I didn't follow basic protocols. And that, my friends, is the main lesson from today. You have to follow the terms of service. Regardless of anything else, if you don't follow those, the exchange could always fall back on saying, as a seller did you follow everything you needed to do? The answer is no. There's generally going to be some financial penalties on you, regardless of what happens. Regardless of what they tell you, otherwise through customer service, through emails, through anything, if you don't follow the rules that are laid out, exceptions aren't going to be made. And as a result, these are the hardships that you're going to have to deal with. So what did I learn? One, read the terms of service as a seller. There are quite a few rules that you do need to follow. And two, if you ever doubt anything, you could always go back and ask again. There's no harm in calling back again. It might always be the answer you want, but it is the answer that is right. That's the worst part. I knew that I shouldn't have been able to do a will-call delivery, but I thought, oh, my account is in good standing. I've been selling with them for five, six, seven years now. I've done hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales with them. I thought I could qualify for an exception. But unless they specifically put that in writing, it means nothing. So at the end of the day, you got to make sure that you understand all the rules that are required of you when listing and selling tickets, because if you don't, you'll be facing a lot of penalties for not following the rules. With all that being said, though, there is one good thing that came out of all this, and that was the arrival of this. Merry Christmas, guys. So I know what's inside here. She does not yet know what's inside here. I have absolutely no idea what's inside. Look at her face. You can tell she has no idea. No idea what's inside. So with that, I'm going to let you do the honors. Okay, well, this thing is way too long, Maria. Yeah, yeah. I can just open it from here. Just pull it out. Ooh! That's his? And that's mine. Look at our twins. I love it. I love getting these fan cutouts. They're always so much fun. Just looking at them is hilarious. So, you know, it's a nice boost on that day of an otherwise unfortunate, unfortunate event. Didn't make up for, you know, losing over $1,600, but, you know, you got to take the wins when you can. Looking back at it all though, it's nothing more than an expensive less than the end of the day of an otherwise very, very successful ticket selling year. Now, if you guys stick around to next week's video, we're going to be talking all about how much money I made selling tickets in 2021. So if you aren't subscribed already, you should go ahead and do that. Hit the bell notification so you don't miss out when that video drops. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did, definitely hit that like button down below and see you guys next time. Don't forget to subscribe.