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The Street
The Street
Ross Kohan

StubHub accused of running a 'bait and switch' pricing scheme

Transcript:

Conway Gittens: I’m Conway Gittens reporting from the New York Stock Exchange. Here’s what we’re watching on TheStreet today.

Investor sentiment is on the upswing after strong Meta results. Better-than-expected sales and profits soothed recent concerns about the AI revolution. Wall Street will be looking for confirmation from Amazon and Apple after the closing bell.

Meanwhile, weekly jobless claims surged to their highest in 11 months, putting renewed focus on the job market ahead of Friday’s key employment report. 

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Turning to other headlines: StubHub is being sued by the attorney general of Washington D.C. for allegedly using a “classic bait-and-switch scheme,” where customers are tricked into paying higher fees for tickets.

Washington DC. Attorney General General Schwalb said in a statement: “StubHub lures consumers by advertising a deceptively low price, forces them through a burdensome purchase process, and then finally reveals a total on the checkout page that is vastly higher than the original advertised price. This is no accident.”

The lawsuit lays out a claim that Stubhub creates a “false sense of urgency” by using a countdown clock, which then creates the idea that consumers have to buy right away or miss out on the tickets.

Stubhub switched to this business model in 2015, since then, according to the lawsuit, it has sold roughly 5 million tickets in Washington, D.C., alone, resulting in $118 million in “hidden” fee revenue.

The company says it is disappointed in the lawsuit and urged new laws that require “all-in pricing uniformly across platforms.”

That’ll do it for your Daily Briefing. From the New York Stock Exchange, I”m Conway Gittens with TheStreet.

Related: StubHub ‘tricks’ customers with bait-and-switch tactic, says lawsuit

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