Hello Readers,
It has come to my attention that a website that many people were counting on for Super Bowl XLIII Tickets has broken their guarantee to its customers. The website, Firstdibz.com offers Super Bowl Tickets for face value, the catch is that you have to pay for the "Dibz" or the right to those face value tickets. The value of these Dibz fluctuates greatly, and they can be bought and sold on the website.
If you purchase a Dibz for a team that does not make the Super Bowl, you lose the cost of the Dibz. However, if your team makes it, you are given the opportunity to buy Super Bowl tickets at face value.
What is now happening, is that people who bought Dibz for their team Weeks ago are now getting e-mails from FirstDibz telling them that their guarantees are no longer valid, even though their team is still alive.
I will use my friend, stand up ticket guy, as an example. He purchased 2 Dibz from FirstDibz.com for the Arizona Cardinals to make Super Bowl XLIII. he bought the dibz on January 3 for the price of $26 each. Back on January 3 it seemed a very unlikely that the Arizona Cardinals would make the Super Bowl, hence the cheap price. Now that the Cardinals have made it to the NFC championship, the same Dibz for the Super Bowl are now selling for over $1600. If the Cardinals were to make the Super Bowl, my friend would be guaranteed tickets and only have face value.
Yesterday on January 13 he received an e-mail from firstdibz.com saying that his dibz were being refunded to him because a Dibz seller misused the website. He was refunded the original cost of the Dibz ($26 each) even though at the time the Dibz were worth over $1600. FirstDibz violated their own user agreement and broke their promise to fans who thought they were guaranteed Super Bowl XLIII tickets. This is equivalent to buying a house for $26,000 and having it appreciate to 1,600,000, then having the original seller say 'Sorry buddy I want my house back, here is $26,000'
FirstDibz is obviously not a very honorable company, and I hope I get the word out that FirstDibz.com is not where you want to get your Super Bowl tickets from.
Please feel free to comment.
6 comments:
Always good when people point out scams that others don't know about. Thanks.
Same thing happened to me. I am irate. I already made plans to go to the game now I'm totally screwed. First Dibz reputation should take a serious hit for this.
Their reputation most definitely will take a hit. I think a lot of people were already skeptical (a few commentors even stated that they called and were assured their dibz were valid) and now people are posting all over the internet about how they were ripped off. Incidents like this do not go unnoticed anymore.
I have purchased options for several teams in the NFL for the past 4 years so that if that team made it to the Super Bowl according to their website I would be guaranteed the option to purchase a Super Bowl ticket at face value for every option I owned for those teams. This year alone I spent just about $1,300 in options for various tickets. The following week of playoffs I had options for the NY Giants, Arizona Cardinals and Philadelphia Eagles which guaranteed me 2 Super Bowl tickets since they were the only remaining teams in the NFC. Since it looked like a lock I did not attempt to sell of any of my remaining options. If I did not have what appeared to be guaranteed Super Bowl tickets I would have sold off my remaining options and purchased tickets on my own. I still owned Giants options which were selling for approx $850 a piece and up and San Diego options which were going for around $350 each and up. Conservatively I could have sold them for around $2,400.00 total. But I did not because I thought I had my tickets guaranteed. The following Wednesday Jan 14th I received an email from First Dibz telling me the Arizona options I had were no good. Here is the jist of the email I received from them. " FirstDIBZ is sending you this very important email because it has come to our attention that an individual uDIBZ seller has misused the FirstDIBZ website (in contravention and breach of the Seller Agreement). As a result, this individual has had their account suspended to protect the integrity of the overall uDIBZ marketplace. FirstDIBZ has accelerated its activities in finding any sellers that are misusing the marketplace and will continue to do so until all sellers are 100% verified. During the seller's misuse of our website, our records confirm that you have purchased DIBZ from this individual and as a result we will be refunding you 100% of the amount you paid for these DIBZ plus 100% of the transaction fees that were incurred." Since then they said my Philadelphia, Arizona, Indianapolis and Miami options were no good. They only options that were still good were my Giants and San Diego options which I would have sold if I had known this sooner. Both of these teams were now out of the playoffs. I have written numerous emails and left a dozen voicemails with the company to explain my prediciment but all I recieved was a refund of my money plus fees for the bad options. I feel that there should be more of a compensation for all the money I lost because of their failure to properly screen sellers who are posting these options on their website. Super Bowl tickets face value are between $700 and $900 but if you try to buy them from anywhere you are going to spend at least $2,500 - $6,500 a piece depending where you are sitting. The options I had for Arizona were for lower level sideline seats which start at a minimum of $4,500 a piece. I would have had 2. Worst case scenario I should have had the $2,400 I lost by not selling the other options and I could have at least purchased 1 of my tickets when I got down to Tampa. Now I have no tickets and no money to even purchase tickets. I will most likely have to cancel my trip which is a story in itself. Since this whole thing started 2 weeks ago FirstDibz.com had changed it service agreement online and removed the word guarantee from everywhere. They use to say if you own the dibz you are guaranteed the right to purchase the tickets to that event at face value. They are asking everyone to agree to their new agreement by Jan 27th or you will not receive the credit they are offering ($250 per dibz for Arizona or Steelers options that were bad).
I am trying to put something together, if you got screwed join me on facebook, my name there is firstdibz ripoff
The NCAA says The Ticket Reserve dba First Dibz owes it $296,500 for Final Four basketball tickets, in Indianapolis Federal Court.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/04/26/New_Complaints.htm
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