Dissatisfaction with Phils stirs fan to place ad
A New Jersey man has placed an ad trying to find others who tried to gain entrance into the second half of Game 5 of the World Series, only to learn their tickets were invalidated.
Dissatisfaction with Phils stirs fan to place ad
Paul Vigna
The ad in Sunday’s Inquirer jumped right out from the bottom of the page.
ATTN PHILLIES TICKER HOLDERS WHO WERE
REFUSED ENTRY TO WORLD SERIES GAME 5
We want to hear from you!!
It goes on to explain that the person who placed the ad was trying to find others who had bought tickets for what turned out to be that infamous Game 5 of the World Series. That’s the one that started in a light rain on Monday night, Oct. 27, and ended in fireworks and a world championship on Wednesday night, Oct. 29. Ticket holders, it said, who bought their seats through legal means on 10/27 “had their tickets suddenly voided before the game resumed on 10.29. This was allegedly at the request of people who resold their tickets online then called the team to claim they ‘lost’ them. These clowns apparently then re-re-scalped the new tickets oneline again for big profits, while an untold number of original ticket holders who attended the first half of the game in the driving rain were refused entry on 10/29 and left standing out on Citizen’s Bank Way on the biggest sports night of their lives.”
Brent Blanchard of
He attended several postseason games, including Game 4 on Sunday night, and knew he also was going the next night for the possible clincher.
“We had tickets we knew were good,” he explained by phone on Tuesday night. “We bought the tickets through a guy who bought them through StubHub. So we got the tickets. And I don’t mind saying I paid like $2400 for four tickets. We dropped about $1100 for a pair for standing room. And knowing Game 5 was the only theoretical game that could be a clinching game, we bought those a week earlier. Almost speculating, if you will. And so we were all excited and we went to that last game together, and the rains came, and they put the big messages on the board and they had all those announcements on the PA saying just hang on to your stubs. And so we did, and we went back two days later and two tickets were still good, and the other two tickets, whoever had originally bought them apparently called in and reported them stolen and got two new tickets for themselves.
“It clicked for me because I remember seeing on Wednesday how many tickets were available on eBay all of a sudden. And all of sudden there was this flood of tickets that were available and they were really cheap, and I can remember thinking, how the hell can this be, for a Game 5, a clinching three-inning Game 5. So I almost bought a couple of others for my son’s friends, but I didn’t and we went to the game and then I saw why. Because we got there that night and it turns out who knows how many people called in their tickets stolen and resold another pair of tickets.”
And resold them on the secondary market, Blanchard asserted, voiding the tickets and leaving him stranded. Blanchard said part of the impetus for the ad was coming across a story published in the Inquirer on the day after the World Series championship quoting team executive John Weber, who said the team had duplicated about 200 tickets. He told writer Mike Jensen that if the Phillies had a record of the ticket being purchased, it could get replaced. If somebody could prove it was their seat, the old stub would be deactivated, Weber said.
Weber added that since StubHub is the official secondary ticket partner for Major League Baseball, with windows operated by Phillies employees, those tickets also could be reproduced if they were lost. Buyers were on record, allowing them to be replaced, he said.
“The other ones, if they bought a ticket three, four, five people down the lane, if we can't verify that receipt - those people might have trouble,” Weber said that night. “We try to help out to a reasonable extent. We’re not going to bat 1.000.”
Blanchard said, based on his observations, that the number was higher than 200. “We were at the will-call window that night and it was packed,” he said. "There were people freaking out. Women crying and dudes hitting the windows, you know. There were people that definitely were legitimate in being scammed, and there were a lot of them. So that’s the real reason we took out the ad is because we know there were a lot more people than just us.”
Blanchard said since the ad was placed that he had gotten nine or 10 calls. He said the ad should run in the Inquirer and Daily News several times.
Bonnie Clark, the team’s director of communications, sent an e-mail earlier today from the winter meetings in
A StubHub spokesman originally said by e-mail today that he thought any problems had have been solved. Wrote Sean Pate: “I talked with our team who handled the event and it seems there wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary for the game in the way of invalid tickets. There were a handful of issues as would be typical when there have been thousands of tickets purchased through us and this game was more unusual of course due to the suspension and continuation on Wed. But any StubHub customer who alerted us of an issue received a replacement ticket on site and was admitted into the game. If there are any outstanding issues, which I seriously doubt there would be from our side, customers can call 1-866-STUBHUB for help. We remedied all matters on game day or shortly thereafter.”
Shown some of the transcribed comments from Blanchard later today, Pate wrote back and said: “Let me once again be sure we have closed all the cases. Or the cases that pertain to us. It looks like we have from what I have seen, so I don’t know where this gentleman is coming from. If he has a Transaction ID he’ll share with you I can specify exactly what happened in his case to set the record straight.”
Blanchard said he'd try and provide that by tomorrow. He said that he spent several weeks sending documentation to the Phillies, everything from a copy of the tickets to his StubHub receipt to pictures he took inside the park that Monday night. “Anything they wanted I gave them,” he said. “And they did this back and forth for two weeks. And then all of a sudden they said, ‘Sorry, there’s nothing more we can do,’ and now they just don’t return e-mails anymore.”
So what does he want at this point? He said just a chance to contact the original owner, the person who called in to get his ticket voided. “I don’t mind pursuing this with them,” he continued, “but the Phillies are now putting themselves in a position to be a shield for who knows how many people who did this intentionally, and they’re saying, ‘We’re not going to release any information.’ Well, you can’t do that. That leaves us no avenue of pursuit.”
And, he said, that just makes an annoying situation worse. “There’s one issue of being out $1100 for the tickets,” Blanchard said. “But the totally separate issue is, even if StubHub called me tomorrow and say, ‘We’ll give you your $1100 back,’ we lost this memory. We lost this experience through someone who knew what they were doing, called in, stole our tickets, and sold them to someone else. So that’s where we’re looking for some type of assistance from the Phillies. I don’t care if the Phillies charge them with something. It doesn’t matter to me.”
The exclamation point to Blanchard’s push for some form of retribution is that he had intended this ad to run a couple of weeks ago. But he had several hurdles to leap over regarding the language he was using. “I had to rewrite that ad four times,” he said. “They kept rejecting it. It was supposed to run like two weeks ago and they kept saying no. The legal department kept rejecting it, saying you can’t have the word Phillies in the ad, and then they said you can’t have the word StubHub, and then you can’t have the word thieves. They kept cherry-picking my words in my ad,” he said, finally stopping to laugh. “So finally I got it dumbed down enough where they accepted it.”
It sucks that there's such stinkin' rat bas tards in the world. I hope those scum are found and charged with grand larceny.— COskier
What should be done is the Phils research thenm and revoke their tickets.— rockinrob- dont worry phillies will be in last place this year..— donofrio
- Presents the first real issue in regards to StubHub being the first authorized 'scalping' website on the web. I think the Phillies should do something nice for these people who got shut out simply for good PR if nothing else.— wabes432
- I will never buy, or sell, tickets on Stub Hub. Joke of a system.— DrexelDragonFan
- They should let them sit in the dugout for next year's WS.......— Mark1npt
- OK, so let me get this straight. stubhub sells tickets for game 5, game 5 gets delayed, announcement is made to hold on to your stub for reentry, then stubhub sells the tickets again for a game that has already started. THAT'S THE TICKET!— podunko
- There is a way around everything, but these guys who did this should be caught then put in front of Citibank Field in a Stockade. We can throw tomatoes for $5 bucks a pop, and make some money for the guy who's car was flipped on Broad later Wed night. We are the World Champions, we can find them.— jmargo23
- If they are caught they should be put on display as to why the system is NOT flawless. And messing with a game like this. There should be lawsuits.— CAskier
if you were a real fan, you would have had playoff tickets. you wouldn't have waited to buy from stubhub. you would have had SEASON TICKETS, at least the sunday package, like me.... poor soul. next time spend $600 bucks and your playoff tickets are guaranteed- Stub Hub is an amazing system to sell tickets, too bad it doesn't help the baseball fan buy a seat at a decent price. When the Phillies operated their 'Ticket Marketplace' you could buy a seat in the Diamond Club for about 20 percent over ticket face value and enjoy a game in a seat you normally wouldn't be able to get for a somewhat reasonable price. Stub Hub prices are probably higher than a scalper would be able to get, but this is caused by a number of factors namely demand by fans. This is what drives this ticket market on Stub Hub - people are willing to pay the high prices. The fraud that occurs is yet another matter all to itself.— phillywebcast
- Wow - so the only "real fans" are season ticket holders? Go buy another PBR, tool.— tjc
- This isn’t the Phillies problem. If someone bought tickets basically through a scalper and got scammed, his beef should be with the scalper that screwed him. I don’t agree with his position or the tone of the article. Anytime you buy a ticket online you’re assuming some risk. But this guy should be freaking out at the person that scammed him, not the team. Get real.— pfreed
- donofrio writes: "dont worry phillies will be in last place this year." Since you must have been visiting another planet I'll clue you in. The Phillies won the World Series "this year".— Russ
- Real fans only attend Sunday games? How's the bobble head collection doing?— Reggie Dunlop
Paul Vigna still has the seat he wrestled out of the concrete at Connie Mack Stadium parked in the finished basement, a 1980 Phillies championship mirror hanging above it. Now, why he’s kept an autograph of former Flyer Bruce Gamble on a sheet of Hockey Hall of Fame paper is another story. A native of Philly who grew up in Lansdale, he’s an assistant sports editor at the Daily News in charge of special projects who has written two columns related to sports and consumers: View From the Seats and Savvy Consumer.
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