Peter Dickson left his Belleville, Ont., home on July 6 with hotel rooms booked and Blue Jays tickets in hand, thinking he was in for a nice weekend getaway.
But instead of enjoying his pre-picked seats, he stood in 35 C with his pregnant wife, elderly parents and a couple of invalid StubHub bar codes.
Dickson is one of three people who contacted CBC Toronto about StubHub’s failure to help them after their accounts were hacked, following a story about a Blue Jays fan whose pricey tickets were sold from his account. All three say they received an initial email from the ticket reseller telling them no “fraudulent activity” took place.
“This was supposed to be a good weekend away … it just turned into pretty much a nightmare,” Dickson said.
The scam targeting StubHub users goes like this: hackers take hold of the accounts and transfer or sell tickets to themselves for cheaper than they’re worth. Then, they use the ticketholder scam account to resell them for their actual price or higher.
Dickson purchased four StubHub tickets for a Blue Jays game back in May. In July, just one day before the game, he received an email saying his attempt to transfer the tickets was unsuccessful.
“It was very bizarre. I’m tech savvy enough. I’m 33 years old,” he said. “I logged on to my StubHub account as tickets were being bought and I was … panicking.”
Dickson locked his account and called StubHub. He says he was told his tickets were still there and assured there would be no issue.
But there was — Dickson wasn’t able to scan his tickets at the arena and the Blue Jays box office told him his tickets had, in fact, been transferred to a different StubHub account.
After CBC Toronto reached out to StubHub about the incidents, the ticket reseller said it would be processing refunds for all three orders.
“In the rare instance of an issue, we make it right,” StubHub told CBC Toronto in an emailed statement July 30.
They pointed to FanProtect Guarantee, StubHub’s AI-powered risk screening and fraud prevention team. Two of the ordeals were mishandled by customer service agents, StubHub said.
“We regret that this was the case; we are reviewing the details further to ensure we learn from this,” the email says.
Cam Molinski flew from Vancouver in May with his 13-year-old son — a bucket list trip that involved watching a Blue Jays game behind home plate.
Molinski realized his account had been hacked just three days before they flew out. He says he called StubHub within minutes of receiving an email saying his tickets had been transferred.
“To me, that’s something that needs to be dealt with immediately. They just put it off … saying don’t worry, it’ll be no problem, we’ll look into it,” he said.
Molinski logged into his account two days before he left, only to find his tickets were now being resold by another user. He phoned StubHub again.
“They showed no initiative to want to rectify this situation or to take that posting down while they looked into it,” he said
Molinski bought backup tickets to make sure the trip wasn’t ruined. He says it took him two months, five phone calls, several emails and a tip to CBC to finally receive a refund.
Emily Sneddon was selling extra concert tickets to artists Sabrina Carpenter, The Weeknd and Morgan Wallen in Toronto. She got excited when she started receiving emails saying her tickets were selling.
That enthusiasm faded when she saw three and five dollar receipts for tickets she had originally listed for $900. Sneddon says the hackers then tried to resell her tickets.
“I was talking to customer support while this was happening and I was begging him to cancel any sale, lock down the account. He told me there was nothing he could do,” she said.
Sneddon has since filed a dispute claim with her credit card company and a police report. She says the entire situation is frustrating, particularly as she was hoping to put funds from the sales towards her wedding.
It wouldn’t make sense to refund every customer this happens to, says Dave Valliere, a business strategy professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.
“When you start setting a precedent for some customers, eventually that becomes the norm for all customers,” he said. “Things like this can escalate or become large expenses for a company.”
Platforms like StubHub could turn to something like two-factor authentication, Valliere says, though that’s expensive, requires sophisticated IT and would put the onus on the company.
“They’re not obligated to,” he said. “That norm in the business world is kind of fluid these days.”
Ultimately, Valliere says StubHub has a choice to make: refund customers affected by the scam or invest in better technology.
“They’ve got to size up which of those two numbers is smaller,” he said.
Dickson, Molinski and Sneddon are set to be refunded by StubHub. But Molinski says the refund and coupon he was offered doesn’t change his view on the ticket reseller.
“I will never use StubHub again,” he said.
