On January 16th, I paid $374 for 2 tickets to see Nate Bargatze at the Encore Theater in Las Vegas…read moreon April 8. I immediately received a confirmation email stating that the tickets would be available for download near the date of the event. On 4/8, having not received the tickets, I contacted StubHub. I spent hours chatting, emailing, and being put on hold. We drove to Encore while StubHub customer service was continuing to "try to solve the problem." Upon arrival, despite having a confirmation with the exact seats, the Encore box office confirmed that we did not actually have tickets and that "StubHub does this all the time."
After half an hour of explaining/begging/pleading to get us into the show and not ruin my wife's birthday plans that we've had since January, a manager took over and began to look at available seats. It was now 15 minutes after the show had started. She graciously offered to book us into even better seats than we'd ordered at "casino rate" which was $360. We were incredibly frustrated but at least we'd still get to see the show! She began the booking process, and then her phone rang. After explaining our situation to whoever was calling and what she was doing, she got a very disappointed look on her face and said, "Ok, I'll tell them." She then said she'd have to charge us an extra $257 per ticket. It was now 8:15pm, the show started at 8pm, and these seats were obviously empty! We were stunned and declined. On the way out of the casino, about 8:45pm, I got a call from StubHub customer service asking if we'd like them to help us book different seats. WHAT?!?! I angrily replied that the show had started 45 minutes ago, to which he replied, "Oh, would you like to have a refund then?" After several more exchanges with their customer service over the next few days, they did refund the $374 a week later.
This statement is primarily to document the incredibly shady business practices of StubHub, but it also displays the horrible service provided by Encore. They could have so easily turned our night from awful to amazing. They would have received $360 for their unsold seats. We would have stayed after the show and spent more money on food, drinks and gambling. But instead, they chose to try to use the bad service of another company as a way to get even more money from us. They could have chosen to make their guests happy, but they chose to ensure that we will never step foot in Encore again. And that, unfortunately, is what most of the casinos and mega-corporations do now, which in my opinion is why tourism is declining so much in Las Vegas.