The Phone Call with StubHub

 I spoke to Ms. Norberg, of StubHub.It took a while; the past couple weeks have been a bit of a blur. There was a bit of damage control going on at work – nothing out of the ordinary, and in fact, in some ways it was a good thing. I work in a bureaucracy that, decades ago, used to get somewhat backed up. It may even have fed into stereotypical notions about bureaucracy; I don’t know, I worked in the private sector back then, publishing companies, CNet, a law firm, etc.

 Perhaps as a result, the group I’m with now prides itself on processing its work quickly. Projects don’t tarry long, even though there are complex situations that can take a while for resolution. Plus, as we are resolving issues members of the public have a keen interest in, some have to be fast tracked, such as those involving children.

 Anyway, as we’re all still human, something slipped and I pitched in to help a coworker. We got things back on track but it meant I didn’t call Ms. Norberg of StubHub as quickly as I might, and then we played phone tag for a bit.

 I’m finding out that people rely on the digital display on their phones to record numbers for them. Even though I carefully enunciated my direct line at work to Ms. Norberg’s voicemail, she somehow dialed the number captured by her phone system, which is my office’s main phone number. (What displays on people’s screens is not my direct line—I have to tell people on cell phones not to call the number displayed on their gadget.)

 So she sent me an email saying she couldn’t reach me, and I called her again, but it all took about two weeks.

 After initial pleasantries, she began again to tell me that StubHub does not print tickets, and cannot guarantee, yadda yadda. It was starting to annoy me; it was enough to live through it all once, I didn’t want to listen to their CYA again.

 But then she changed tack. She reiterated that they want to make it up to me. And she told me that StubHub does have a partnership with major league baseball. As I mentioned earlier, it would have been nice if someone at StubHub had run interference for me and contacted the Pirates, so that the team in Bradenton had known a guy had had his ticket stolen and been ready for me when I arrived.

 She said they had identified the customer service reps at StubHub who had given me halfway assistance, and they were being re-trained so that, in the future, they’d go to the MLB teams and be of more help. That impressed me.

 And she said they wanted to make it up to me. I had gotten an email back in March offering me a voucher (for $20, I think) which was nice but it had slipped from the forelobes the way so many things do. My out-of-pocket, for the ticket, shipping and the StubHub fee had been $42.75, and Ms Norberg sent me an email with a gift code I can apply to future purchases as a discount.

 Which is decent of them. I’ll use it for Mrs. Ombud; getting reimbursed for the ticket doesn’t mean that much to me. I got into the game, albeit not in the seat I’d bought behind the Twins’ dugout. But it really was quite a hassle for us, for my wife in particular, and in some way it makes up for all the stress we went through.

 If she has something she wants to see, that’s fine, otherwise, maybe I’ll use it to go see a Twins game when they visit Oakland.

The upshot is that it pays to blog about experiences like this. I think Jellyjules’ approach is good, too (she commented in my last post that she writes letters the old-fashioned way to the presidents of companies) in that she gets a response. An what worked for me was to simply blog about it. Back in January I put Comcast’s name in the subject line, and now StubHub — both times, the companies have contacted me wanting to rectofy the situaiton. chalk one up for the blogosphere.