This woman flew from New Jersey to Madrid with her friend for a Taylor Swift concert. But just hours before the event, the digital StubHub tickets were nowhere to be found.
“StubHub is an actual joke,” Nicole Vitulli (@vitulls) says in a TikTok clip. “I need to tell you guys what happened because they’re refusing to refund me, and it’s complete bullsh*t.”
Vitulli explains that she and her friend decided on a whim to fly to Madrid for 48 hours to see Taylor Swift live. They chose to go overseas because they got a “deal” on the tickets which cost $400 each. Vitulli said that was a great price compared to how much they cost in the United States.
On average, Taylor Swift tickets cost a whopping $1,088, CNBC reported, putting Swift right behind Adele, whose tickets run around $1,243. Compare that to other huge artists like megastar Beyoncé, whose average ticket price is $323, and rap beef loser Drake, whose tickets average around $450.
But, when Vitulli went into her email to accept and download the tickets an hour before the event she got this message:
“Transfer failed. Your tickets have been returned to sender,” Vitulli recalled.
The Swiftie remained confused because nowhere in the original email did it state she needed to accept the tickets within a certain time frame or risk them being returned to the sender.
Frustrated and running out of time, Vitulli got on the phone with StubHub.
“We’re literally in Europe with no concert tickets,” Vitulli says. “You can imagine we’re panicking and freaking out.”
The StubHub rep said that they reached out to the sender to see if they could resend the tickets. If the person didn’t send them, the rep assured Vitulli that they’d be protected under StubHub policy and could get a refund or replacement tickets.
While they tried to get replacement tickets, StubHub had none available, so Vitulli and her friend scoured all the other ticketing sites and found some for $800 each (double what they originally paid).
“We just need to get into the concert,” Vitulli reasoned.
@vitulls Stub hub nightmare!!!! Will never use them again. Not even a partial refund, credit or anything at all to make up for an issue that was completely on their end! @StubHub @Brittany Nierman #taylorswift #erastour #stubhubscam #stubhub ♬ original sound – Nicole Vitulli
A StubHub solution gone wrong
The StubHub rep told her to go ahead and get off the phone to buy the other tickets because, no matter what, she’d be protected under their policy and would be eligible for a refund.
Skeptical, Vitulli—who wanted to stay on the phone with the rep until the other tickets were confirmed so she could then ask for her refund right away—kept asking if the rep was sure that’s how it worked and that she’d get a refund.
The rep kept assuring her that Vitulli was guaranteed a refund.
They buy the $800 tickets, and lo and behold, 20 minutes before the concert starts the original tickets come through to her phone.
She called StubHub the next day to sort things out, and they told her she couldn’t get a refund because the tickets came through “in time for the concert.”
“Pull your phone records. This woman told me multiple times that I could get a refund no matter what,” Vitulli told StubHub’s customer service rep. After multiple calls and emails back and forth, they told her she had to get a lawyer in order to pull the phone records.
“Are you f*cking kidding me?” Vitulli says.
With fees, StubHub owes her nearly $1,000, she adds.
“I will never ever ever use StubHub again,” Vitulli says, adding that she filed a dispute with her credit card company but isn’t sure that will do anything.
In a follow-up video, Vitulli explained that StubHub ended up reaching out to her after seemingly seeing her video on social media. They apologized for how the situation was being handled and told her that if she closed the dispute with her card, they’d be able to send her the refund.
Now, if Vitulli closes the dispute, she can’t reopen it. So she’s closing it, trusting that StubHub will keep their word.
“You have it in writing they have no choice now,” a commenter wrote.
“Make sure to follow up with them!! This happened to my friend, and they never refunded her. She ended up going to the BBB,” another said.
@vitulls Replying to @Kristina stubhub update 🤞🏻#greenscreen #stubhub @StubHub ♬ original sound – Nicole Vitulli
Did StubHub follow through with the refund?
In an email, Vitulli confirmed that she did in fact get her refund.
Now, this isn’t the first time StubHub has stressed buyers the heck out. In another video a person shared that they also traveled to another city for an event but his StubHub tickets never arrived and their only solution was to offer him inferior tickets to the front row ones he’d bought.
The Daily Dot reached out to Vitulli and StubHub for comment via email.
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