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SALT LAKE CITY — To say Taylor Swift is a powerful force is no exaggeration. When her Eras tour hit Seattle last month, diehard fans shook the ground enough to register 2.3 magnitude in seismic activity.
In that crowd was a Utah fan who says a ticket broker charged her hundreds of dollars for a mishap when she tried to sell a couple of extra Swift concert tickets.
"Getting tickets was just a nightmare anyway," said Kate Nielsen.
Her nightmare got worse when she tried to sell two extra tickets she had for last month's Seattle gig. Immediately after she posted them on the ticket resale website StubHub, she realized the date was wrong.
"I went to delete it, and then it said error," she said.
Yeah, error, because in that super brief amount of time, those tickets were gone — sold. Nielsen said she got on the horn with StubHub right away.
"They told me that because it was a sale and now it's not a listing," she said, "I can't delete the listing. I have to cancel a sale."
Canceling is expensive for Nielsen. The buyer bought the tickets from her for $1,500. StubHub found the buyer replacement tickets, after the sale got canceled at no cost to the buyer. But Nielsen has to pay $1,300, even though she never got paid for her tickets the buyer has in addition to the replacements.
"StubHub said that there was nothing they could do to get my tickets back and that there was no guarantee that I could get my tickets back, but I was still responsible to pay for the other tickets," Nielsen said.
Out two Taylor Swift tickets and with StubHub demanding she pay $1,300 or they will send her to collections, Nielsen decided it was time to Get Gephardt.
We looked at StubHub's Seller Policies: It says for dropped sales, they will charge up to the ticket's sale price or the full amount of their cost to remedy the problem, whichever is greater. OK, but Nielsen swears it was an honest mistake and she never got a dime. So, why should she have to pay such a massive penalty as though she had ripped someone off?
In a statement, they told us sellers get paid "only if a buyer gets in the door" and are fined if they must "purchase another ticket to get the buyer into the event." And those replacement tickets the buyer got? StubHub puts their value at $5,800.
"I don't want to get my credit affected by getting sued by StubHub for $1,300," Nielsen said.
However, there was also a change of heart. StubHub says it waived that hefty fine as a "one-time courtesy" though the "original charge" was "handled correctly."
So, Nielsen shook Seattle with some 72,000 other "Swifties" free from the threat of a lawsuit. And a bonus: Her buyer ended up sending back those tickets, which Nielsen sold somewhere else.
You should also know that StubHub says it is also against its policy to contact the buyer when a problem like this happens. Any sort of offers to correct a mistake must be done through StubHub.
