StubHub is facing a lawsuit from the Washington DC attorney general over allegations that the ticket resale platform imposes “complicated junk fees” on concertgoers after luring them in with “deceptively low prices.”
In a complaint filed on Wednesday, the Attorney General Brian Schwalb accuses StubHub of violating the District's consumer protection laws by using “drip pricing” — an “exploitative pricing scheme” in which a company requires consumers to pay unadvertised fees on the original price.
“For years, StubHub has illegally defrauded District consumers through its complex system of trash fees,” Schwalb said in a statement announcing the case. “StubHub lures consumers in by advertising a deceptively low price, forces them through a burdensome purchase process, and then ultimately reveals a total on the checkout page that is far higher than the originally advertised ticket price.”
The “hidden” fees charged by StubHub totaled “more than 40% of the advertised ticket price,” the lawsuit alleges, and D.C. consumers have reportedly paid $118 million in such fees since 2015.
In a statement, StubHub said the company is “committed to creating a transparent, safe and competitive marketplace” for its customers. “We are disappointed that the DC Attorney General is targeting StubHub when our user experience is in line with the law, the practices of our competitors and the broader e-commerce sector. We strongly support federal and state solutions that strengthen existing laws to empower consumers, such as requiring uniform all-in pricing across all platforms.”
Consumers have complained for years about “convenience” and “service” fees attached to the price of tickets to concerts and other live events. Laws requiring “all-ticket pricing” — the full, final cost, presented at the start of a sale — have been enacted by New York, California and other states in recent years. A federal bill (Transparency in Charges for Key Events Ticketing, or TICKET, Act) passed the House of Representatives in May and awaits passage in the Senate.
Hidden fees are also a key charge in the pending antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation filed by the Justice Department earlier this year. In that case, the Justice Department argued that such fees charged by Ticketmaster to American concertgoers “far exceed” those in other countries.
“Any fan who has logged onto the Ticketmaster website to purchase a concert ticket knows the feeling of shock and disappointment as the base cost of the ticket increases dramatically with the addition of fees,” the DOJ wrote in its complaint against Live Nation. “Whatever the name of the fee and however the fees are packaged and collected, it is essentially a 'Ticketmaster Tax' that ultimately increases the price fans pay.”
In Wednesday's lawsuit, Schwalb argues that StubHub imposes the same fees on its customers. Calling it a “classic bait-and-switch scheme,” the lawsuit alleges that the final price of a StubHub ticket is revealed only after customers have “invested time and effort clicking through an intentionally long, multi-page purchase process” — which features a countdown clock measurement to “create a false sense of urgency”.
“StubHub designed this unfair and deceptive scheme to make more money,” Schwalb wrote. “By forcing consumers to click through over a dozen pages before seeing the actual price, StubHub puts consumers in the position of having to choose between paying these unexpected fees or giving up their time and effort.
In addition to raising such fees at the end of a transaction, the suit also accuses StubHub of choosing misleading names for them — a claim that echoes longstanding complaints about what vaguely named ticket fees charged by many companies actually cover.
“What StubHub identifies as 'Fulfillment and Service Fees' are actually affected by factors unrelated to 'fulfillment' or 'service,'” the lawsuit states. “Furthermore, fees vary widely and StubHub never discloses to the consumer how these fees are calculated or which services fund these fees.”
Read the full lawsuit against StubHub here:
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/stubhub-sued-junk-fees-ticket-prices-dc/
