Part III of the Stub Hub discussion and special deal

MUSICAL CHAIRS BETTER DEAL GUARANTEE NUMBER 2
Refer a friend or Colleague who uses STUB HUB. If there total order is over $200 and they agree to send us an email confirming a previous Stub Hub purchase, we will send you both a $50 gift card from Musical Chairs. They are welcome to take us up on the first guarantee as well.

Getting back to an overall comparison, The second thing we can focus on is service. Stub Hub is a brilliant marketing company, but the service providers there know very little about attending events. In law school (I practiced law in my previous lifetime) we used to speak of Widget Sellers. Stub Hub is the proverbial widget seller. They market excellently, but know little about what they are selling (they don’t own it, they are just facilitators of a transaction). The least experienced salesperson at Musical Chairs has been selling tickets for a minimum 20 years. Each person here has been to a minimum of 30 venues and I personally have been to approximately 100 worldwide (just for fun I counted 14 baseball stadiums and 11 hockey arenas including the Olympics). While service is certainly subjective, we objectively have substantially more knowledge in making consumers have an informed choice when deciding on what tickets to buy. Moreover, I would be hard pressed to enumerate how many hundreds of people I have given shortcuts that have saved 100s of hours of time to venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, Dodger Stadium, The Honda Center and Angels Stadium. Try getting the directions through Stub Hub. I am sure they will refer you to mapquest.

While we understand that some people don’t want any of the service they PAY FOR, we feel it compares favorably with Stub Hub. It does not have all the bells and whistles, but it is fully as functional and is AT LEAST as easy to navigate. One nice thing as compared to Stub Hub is there is NO 10% service charge which we have always felt as odd (after all, what other product do you go to the cash register and they say 10% please . Could you imagine if they did that in a Grocery store or your favorite Dept Store). It is a great (deceptive) way to look cheaper when people do comparison shopping on the internet. They pioneered this in the ticketing business and other ticketing websites have copied this tactic. Moreover, many now actually list a price under what is being charged to them and add a service charge which is as high as 28% (article for another day).

Finally, there is the very passion we have for the business that does not exist at Stub Hub. They have lots of money behind them and some very brilliant and frankly nice people who work there. Howver, they are all one e-commerce job away from their next job. Our passion is one of our differences which we translate into service. Everyone who works for Musical Chairs does so because of their passion for attending live events. Many of you know my personal story (From lawyer to scalper), but if you don’t feel free to ask. I would be happy to discuss it over a meal (our treat). SH was started by a brilliant Stanford Business School student named Jeff Flohr with a penchant for marketing. It was done strictly for money as evidenced by the sale of SH to Ebay a few years after it began. SH is managed almost exclusively by ex E-bayers (maybe we will see Meg Whitman rehired to sell tickets at SH). SH is led by Chris Tsakalakis, a brilliant gentlean as well as a tremendously nice guy. Nevertheless, nothing about his love for tickets or going to Live events got him involved with SH. He ran Ebay Stores and spent 19 years in the internet world. His passion seems to be in growing internet companies. He is GREAT at this, but that often does not translate into great customer experiences. If you look up and down there roster of executives, they are ALL internet experts. This is terrific for growing internet business’ but often does not translate into passion for tickets. Try calling Stub Hub and see for yourself! 1-866-788-2482. Try calling Musical Chairs 800-659-1702.

Very little of the above is subjective, so we offer you to take us up on our guarantees to you.