Ticketholders File $5 Million Class Action Lawsuit Against StubHub Over Coronavirus Refunds

A man from Wisconsin has filed a five million dollar class action lawsuit against the ticket reseller StubHub, after the reseller did not refund the money he spent on a suspended NHL game ticket. The reseller had given those seeking refunds coupons worth 120% of the original ticket price instead.

The man filing the lawsuit, Matthew McMillan, accuses the ticket resale company of breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation. He hopes that the court prohibits the reseller from distributing the coupons as opposed to these refunds.

He claims that the company’s “FanProtect guarantee,” policy promised users their full money back for years, although they sent out emails on March 12th and the 25th of this year, offering coupons as an alternative choice to these refunds. He says several days later on March 30th it had sent an email notifying it will be distributing the coupons only

StubHub sent an email on March 30th stating that it implemented this policy because of the impact that the coronavirus pandemic has impacted the tourism and entertainment industries.

“We are facing significant timing delays in recouping funds from the thousands of sellers on our platform, and expect these challenges to continue in the coming months,” StubHub President Singh Cassidy wrote in the email. They explained that they were offering a 120% credit for canceled purchases as a “thank you for remaining patient in a very challenging period.”

McMillan and his attorney’s have heavily contested this assertion and state that some of the customer may not even be able to sue these coupons if this pandemic continues to spread.

“Dumping promised refunds for expiring coupons during the time of greatest financial suffering in recent history is cruel and wrong,” McMillan’s attorney Nick Coulson says. “Especially because people have no idea if they’ll even be able to use the coupons — we don’t know what the next 12 months are going to look like. To the extent that StubHub claims financial constraints have forced its hand (into its customers’ pockets), those constraints are entirely of its own making. Through this action, we hope to provide people some small bit of relief during this uncertain time.”