1. Me and my wife had dozens of deals with PFS before and even after opting into their deal it was obvious we can sell the coins for much bigger profit on ebay we never reneged on any deals.
2. We opted into the deal and followed all the rules of the deal.
3. Some of the tickets we bought were resell tickets and they were bought BEFORE any notification from PFS to buy only standard tickets. As soon as we received such instructions we made sure not to buy them even it's pretty difficult to check your emails in the heat of the moment and the original deal did not include instructions to keep checking emails or the tickets you buy might not be honored. Also, expecting every email to go through in time when every minute counts is a not very reliable way to communicate major changes to the deal that might create huge losses.
4. We have never participated in such ticket deal before and never knew that it's a "common knowledge" that we are not allowed to buy resell tickets. PFS instructions before the deal did not include this "small" detail. PFS instructions were to keep checking ticketmaster for the newly released tickets long after the first batch is released. If they would not give such instructions I think a number of resell tickets bought will be negligible.
5. PFS explained that they refuse to honor resell ticket is because it was partially our "mistake". They gave us an option to except 50% payment of the loss on resell tickets (we lost this way over $1k) plus they have confiscated the profit of $25 per ticket for ALL tickets we bought (around $2.5k) as a condition of any partial payment for the resell tickets. The only way PFS was ready to pay us even partially for ANY tickets was our agreement to not demand any profit on the standard tickets or not to demand any payment to reimburse for the resell tickets. .
6. PFS stated that on this deal they did not make any official contract, so our opting in to the deal and following their instructions is not considered a contract and any money from them is basically a good will gesture.
7. By mistake we bought a couple of thousand dollars in tickets for a different Travis show. Obviously, PFS refused even to discuss them because it was our mistake. While I understand that this show was not included in the deal I do think better original instructions would prevent such situation.
Do you think PFS is ethical/legal/kosher in this situation?
I was initially against replying to articles/blogs regarding our failed deal, but I figured that this is the one forum that deserves to hear from us directly.
I do not anticipate doing a Q&A or a full back-and-forth here, so please keep that in mind if you're responding to this.
I just wanted to share several facts, points, thoughts… in no particular order.
1. This was a failed deal. It's on us. We're taking a massive hit on it.
2. Our SOLE priority from the minute they announced new shows, and prices tanked, was to make sure that every member who bought tickets for us is made whole.
3. We did indeed negotiate with members who bought resell tickets by mistake to share some of the loss. We offered them the FULL "normal" cost PLUS 50% of the "extra" they paid. The quantity of tickets that were resold was - b”H - a real small percentage of our overall inventory/tickets. Even with members taking some of the losses, we estimate that we're going to incur an ~80% loss on these resell tickets. Almost all resell tickets were purchased after we sent out emails advising not to buy them.
4. The ONLY people from whom we declined to take their tickets entirely were those who did not opt into our deal or those who initially told us they had bought X quantity of tickets and then, hours/days later, changed their numbers and wanted us to take more tickets. In the latter case, we still took their initial quantity of tickets.
5. The member in the quoted article was one of the above cases. He filled out our form stating that he had 90 tickets, and when we synced his accounts, he had dozens more. He also didn’t follow one of our deal terms of forwarding the Ticketmaster confirmations. The article doesn't mention that we still offered to take all of his initial quantity of tickets for his full cost.
6. As of now, we have paid almost 90% of our members their entire cost.
7. We still hope to pay some members commissions – those who opted to wait until their tickets sell, enabling us not to have to front the money.
8. We know that we adjusted our "deal" a couple of times. We had no choice – we needed to stay solvent so that we could get our members their cost back to pay their credit cards on time. Although, as stated, most are paid, and things are under control, this was not a given at all.
9. With what we were facing, lesser people (a lesser company) would have just shuttered their doors.
Moving forward, we learned a lot.
For years, our model was pure arbitrage and sharing ~50-75% of our guaranteed/locked-in profits with our members - no risk to us or our members.
We had no coin deals from April 2022 until just a few months ago, so we started this new division. We had some successes with Sofi and verified codes, but then this came around. There are other risk-free things that we’re working on, and we pledge to return and stick with our risk-free arbitrage model.
Again, 98% of our members will walk away from this deal having recouped at least their entire cost and have earned credit card spending as well. For such a travesty, we are considering this a massive win.
For the small percentage that will end up taking a loss on this deal, we feel bad about the outcome, we honestly do.
For those that did indeed take a loss and would still want to work with us in the future, we commit to doing our best to make things right. At this point, though, we took measures that were required to stay afloat and to make all our members who followed our deal correctly whole.
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