StubHub canceled customers’ World Cup tickets hours before matches, costing them thousands of dollars: lawsuit
Two California residents shelled out thousands for World Cup tickets from StubHub only for the company to cancel their orders at the last minute — in one case after a man traveled all the way to Mexico for the match between Mexico and Korea, new court papers allege.
Los Angeles resident Reuben Renteria paid $2,294 for two tickets to the game below the border on June 18, but he arrived in the country “only to find that StubHub cancelled the order,” according to a potential class-action suit filed in Manhattan federal court Tuesday.
Renteria was refunded the ticket costs a week later “after significant complaints” to the company, but he “had already lost sums of money for travel costs, as well as time, due to being misled by StubHub,” the filing alleges.
Orange County resident Julia Reeker Moghal also came up empty-handed when she got all the way to the SoFi Stadium in the City of Angels for a Switzerland matchup on June 18 and was unable to enter, the suit claims.
When Moghal received notice that the three tickets she bought for $1,905 were canceled, she “frantically spent hours on the phone with StubHub.”
The company first insisted the tickets were null and then promised “they would deliver her tickets an hour before the match, which never occurred,” the court documents claim.
She still hasn’t received a refund for the tickets, the filing says.
Renteria and Moghal “were lied to and purchased World Cup tickets for large sums of money — only to incur tremendous financial losses due to the necessity to pay travel expenses, take off time from work, and for other ancillary costs,” the suit charges.
“This is a new low for a sports ticketing industry that has been rampant with consumer protection issues time and time again to the detriment of the fans who make sports special,” the court papers allege.
The duped duo only looked to the ticketing giant because, like so many others, they were faced with the “Hobson’s Choice” of buying from StubHub — a third-party unauthorized reseller — or from FIFA, which offers astronomical “prices they simply cannot afford,” the suit says.
Renteria and Moghal “like so many hundreds (if not more) of World Cup fans purchased World Cup Tickets only to find out that those tickets either did not exist, were revoked without any forewarning, or had been erased due to what FIFA calls ‘poor digital infrastructure,’” the documents allege.
The issues persist even though StubHub offers the Fan Protect Guarantee, backing their purchases, the filing alleges.
Both Renteria and Moghal have reported the incidents to the Federal Trade Commission and are seeking unspecified damages, according to the suit.
Many people have come forward with similar stories involving World Cup tickets getting canceled days and hours before matches and have called for regulators to launch probes.
The Attorney General in British Columbia announced she is investigating the debacle, according to a report by CBC.
StubHub didn’t immediately return a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
