Sunday, January 24, 2010

Chaos At The Caps Game - Why I'm never using Stubhub Again.

Good afternoon blog readers! Has anyone out there ever used stubhub? I'm sure if you haven't, you know someone who has. I had never even heard of them before, but for Hanukkah/Christmas Bryan and I decided to take my parents to a Caps game, and so I ordered four tickets on Stubhub. We have a guy from whom we usually buy tickets, but he admitted that we should try stubhub for this particular game because we might be able to find a better deal. Our guy is strictly business and isn't one to lower his prices, so I looked on stubhub and lo and behold I found four tickets at the very top level (of the arena) for a lower price. I told Bryan and ordered the tickets. They arrived a couple of weeks later and we gave them to my parents on Xmas morning.

Yesterday was the day of the game and we decided to leave around 10:30am and have a fun filled day in DC. We went to the Natural History Museum, the Art Museum, and then walked around DC for a bit. We went and got Cupcakes at Red Velvet, and then went to a bar and my parents got a beer before heading over to the game.

We left for the 7:05 game a little before 6, and ran to put our coats and stuff in the car before heading to Verizon Center. We got there with a good 45 minutes left until the game started, and were anxious to get inside and receive our free travel mugs! Bags were checked and we got in line to get out tickets scanned. Lines were going quickly and my parents got to the tickets checker first. Their tickets were scanned and instead of the cute little beeping noise that the scanners usually make, it made a scarier noise and my parents were told they could not go in. Our turn came and we were told the same thing. We were all told that our tickets were no good and to go to the box office. We ran to the box office where we were told that whoever sold us our tickets had double sold them and had sent the tickets in email form to someone else, thus voiding out the hard tickets which we were currently holding in our hands. She wrote void on them, gave them back, and told us that we could either call Stubhub or go visit their location which was only a couple of blocks away.

Bryan called because I was frantic at this point, and he said that when he explained the situation to the woman on the phone she said "This is the absolute worst thing that could've happened." Very comforting, lady. Eventually I had to get on the phone because it was me, after all, who placed the order.

She said to please hold while she called ticketmaster and we decided at this point to start walking to the stubhub office while I was still on hold. The office was basically just a room with three guys sitting around a table, and they could tell the minute that we walked in that their night was about to become chaotic.

Long story short, they told us that we had a fan guarantee and that we WOULD be going to this game. They all got on their phones at once trying to make it happen. One guy called the person who sold us the bad tickets and of course they didn't answer. The other two started trying to find us real tickets.

They eventually got us two pairs of tickets but the seats were not together. The seats were AMAZING though, and it appeared to be our only option so we took them. The guys said that we of course did not have to pay for the upgrade, because apparently they had the guys (who sold us the tickets) credit card information... Not only would he have to pay for the new tickets (which were literally twice as much as the old ones) but he would NOT be getting paid from stubhub.

So we get to the game and decided to give my parents the better seats (center ice, section 214, front row center!), and we went to go find out seats. Our seats were just as close, but ended up being two random folding chairs that weren't really even in a section. Whatever. We didn't have time to ask why the hell we had these random seats, and to be honest, they were probably the only seats at Verizon Center that hadn't been sold.

We all enjoyed the seats but Bryan and I felt bad because the game was a gift to my parents, and after the Caps scored their first goal we felt really bad because we wished that we could all be celebrating together. SO we came up with an idea. At intermission my mom and I would switch seats. Bryan and my mom in the folding chairs, me and my dad in my parents seats. THEN at the second intermission Bryan and I would switch and I would sit with my mom in the chairs, and Bryan would get to sit in the good seats. We made the first switch and all got to enjoy the second period. Luckily, the third period was the best because there were two empty seats next to my dad and me, so Bryan and my mom moved into those and we FINALLY all got to sit together!

The caps won 4-2, and my parents had a great time. I of course spent the first two periods stressing over who was going to sit where, how we were going to work it out, and if we could possibly get in trouble for any seat switching. With all the worrying and running from one side of the arena to the other, I didn't have time to get food until the 2nd intermission and they were out of any real food, so I ate popcorn.

By the end of the game I was exhausted, starving, and generally grumpy.

the game was fun, and the drunk people in my section LOVED my Fleischmann jersey. I ended up having a very long conversation about why I love Fleischmann, why i decided to get the jersey, and how he's all of a sudden one of the top scorers on the team. That was probably the highlight of my night.

I did fall asleep on the ride home, and then FINALLY got to eat something around midnight (McDonalds... YUM!).

The night ended up being just fine, but I will NEVER order from Stubhub again. The chances of something like that happening are slim, but still... NEVER AGAIN.

1 comment:

  1. Quite the experience to be sooo excited to pass through the gates into the arena, but then be told your tickets are invalid and have VOID written along the bottom of them. I am so glad it worked out in the long run (and that we essentially got to see the game for free in the amazing seats). I do wish we would have had someone take our picture and kept one of the tickets with VOID written on it and then framed it. Ah well. Haha.

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