A dad forked out a whopping $21,000 (£16,000) on Taylor Swift concert tickets for his daughter and her friends after their original tickets reportedly failed to turn up. When the pop star's Era's tour was announced last year, Anthony Silva rushed to purchase four tickets as a Christmas gift to his 19-year-old daughter Katlyn.
The tickets meant mega fan Kaylyn and her pals would be able to see their favourite singer on May 19 at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, USA. Altogether, the generous gift via ticket resale company StubHub set Anthony back $1,800 (£1,444).
However, disaster struck when the father was left empty-handed just days before the concert as he claims StubHub emailed him to say the tickets were never delivered and replacement seats weren’t available. Anthony says the company also offered him a full $1,800 refund.
So he headed online to buy some more tickets in hope they'd come through in time. After going through a different ticket site, he was left having to pay $21,000 - around 11 times more than the total he originally paid.
Commenting on the StubHub ticket nightmare on US television station WCVB-TV, he said: "This is just not right. In my opinion, they should not wait until the day before for the tickets to be sent out by the re-seller."
A statement on the StubHub website reads: "You'll get your tickets by the end of the day on your order's expected delivery date (EDD). The EDD is based on when the seller told us they'd have the tickets. We can't ask them to send tickets earlier than the date in your order details.
"It may be close to the event due to ticket delivery delays. This happens when the primary ticket company doesn’t release the tickets to the original buyer for a while. Some venues, artists, and teams don't release tickets until a couple days before an event. You may not get them until just before that date. Some tickets won't be delivered until 24 hours before the event."
Anthony added: "Approximately $21,000, for better seats but of course you can see this puts me back a little bit. I think it’s for no reason but for incompetence through the third party or through StubHub."
Anthony says he played a joke on his daughter and her friends when he revealed the tickets hadn't arrived. "We played a joke on them telling them yesterday, telling them the tickets were really gone, and the look on their faces I never want to see again. I won’t tell you who but one girl had a quivering lip," he said.
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Katlyn told WCVB-TV she was very upset by the news at first. “I went home slamming stuff, I was so angry, so disappointed because I was looking forward to this for nine months,” she said.
However, it was all smiles when the dad went on to tell them about the newly purchased tickets - he even rented out a limousine for the occasion.
StubHub has been approached for comment.
