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Fighting Bullies: People who refuse to pay for purchased tickets.
Stexe
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello, I'm looking for some help or advice regarding buying a PAX East ticket for someone and then never receiving money after an agreement (written) was made.
The person in question agreed to purchase one of my extra PAX East tickets ($70 face value) and then never responded. I tried to contact this person multiple times through many means (Facebook, texting, phone calling), but they never responded outside of a sleepy stupor saying they would call me back (they never did). Apparently their dog died and they were in such a distraught state that they could not simply say they did not want the ticket. I don't understand it either, but whatever.
The simple fact is that by being a nice guy, holding onto a ticket, and trying to figure out what was going on, I'm now out $70. This wasn't a problem last year when I did the same thing for the same person -- everything went smoothly. However, this time the individual removed me as a Facebook friend after posting on their profile asking for the money (I tried to do it in private for over a week but had no response). Then proceeded to say the "law was on" their side. Even if it is, I still plan to fight this. Bullies should not get away with things like this and the money is not important, but the principle of the thing is to me.
I understand how to do this if the person lives in the same state and county, but this individual lives in a different state. I also understand that the fees to process something like this will cost me more than I will make, but I do not care. Just like the bullies at Ocean Marketing, people who think they can get away with this deserve everything they get and more.
Any thoughts or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
P.S. I only wish this was an April Fools joke. It makes me sad that there are people like this out there.
The person in question agreed to purchase one of my extra PAX East tickets ($70 face value) and then never responded. I tried to contact this person multiple times through many means (Facebook, texting, phone calling), but they never responded outside of a sleepy stupor saying they would call me back (they never did). Apparently their dog died and they were in such a distraught state that they could not simply say they did not want the ticket. I don't understand it either, but whatever.
The simple fact is that by being a nice guy, holding onto a ticket, and trying to figure out what was going on, I'm now out $70. This wasn't a problem last year when I did the same thing for the same person -- everything went smoothly. However, this time the individual removed me as a Facebook friend after posting on their profile asking for the money (I tried to do it in private for over a week but had no response). Then proceeded to say the "law was on" their side. Even if it is, I still plan to fight this. Bullies should not get away with things like this and the money is not important, but the principle of the thing is to me.
I understand how to do this if the person lives in the same state and county, but this individual lives in a different state. I also understand that the fees to process something like this will cost me more than I will make, but I do not care. Just like the bullies at Ocean Marketing, people who think they can get away with this deserve everything they get and more.
Any thoughts or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
P.S. I only wish this was an April Fools joke. It makes me sad that there are people like this out there.
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My thoughts are that when you didn't hear back from him, you probably should have given the ticket to someone else. You also say he "agreed to purchase one of your extra PAX East tickets," which implies that you had already bought the extra ticket and then offered it to him. I'm not sure if that's what you're trying to get across, but in that case it's not like you bought it just for him and now are out $70. You could have given it to someone else for the $70 instead, even at the door.
I'm not defending him saying he would take it and then not paying you for it, and it sucks, but I don't think you have really any recourse here. It's not likely to be something you can have him arrested for or anything. This was to be a private sale, and is one of the very many very good reasons people are heavily discouraged from buying extra tickets they don't need and then selling them. If you want to buy for a specific group of people, you should always get the money first if you can.
Bullying me by challenging me to take him/her to court and lying that they did not say they actually wanted it, despite multiple records saying otherwise. They never told me that their dog died or that anything was wrong until a week later. Posting on someone's profile and simply saying "What's wrong? Why don't you respond? I'm out $70 because you wouldn't respond and I'd like my money" is anything but trying to be nice about it.
Yes, when I didn't hear back I should have tried to sell the ticket. However, last year the person was 1 day late and still wanted the ticket. What if that had happened again? Legally, I do have recourse, but small claims court is extremely difficult and costly for out of state challenges. I did kind of buy the ticket just for him/her, as I knew they wanted to go ahead and would likely ask to buy it.
Either way, I doubt anyone here could give me help. I was curious about the legal ramifications and what I should do, but after doing more research it seems to be extremely costly and time consuming to challenge it. I'll just have to come up with something clever.
I say eat the ticket and try to move on.
PSN: astronautcowboy 3DS: 5343-8146-1833
I have Sega, Nintendo and Xbox games and systems for sale. Please help me buy diapers.
Then you should have said, "sorry mate, when you didn't get back I sold it, thems the breaks"
You overextended yourself beyond what was necessary by holding on to the ticket. The other guy probably just assumed "fuck it whatever, if he wants his money back he can just sell it" (which is lazy and irresponsible sure, but hardly bullying). Holding on to the ticket wasn't an obligation on your part, it was a favor, a favor you did unasked.
But now you're willing to spend MORE than you lost just to "teach the guy a lesson", its a waste of effort because ultimately you burned yourself. Yeah it sucks when you go the extra mile to be nice but there was no expectation on your part to do it or on his to return the favor. If you know the guy's unreliable and paid late last year then maybe you don't owe him a ticket this year.
He's a flake not a bully. The real issue is that you didn't assert any boundaries to begin with, and now its nurtured into a big ol' grudge.
Also it occurs to me that if this guy was going to PAX and isn't in the same state he's probably a forumer and you just aired your grievance right where you know he's going to see it.
PS Don't become one of those "never do anyone a favour" guys either; doing that to yourself would be even worse than losing a lousy 70 bucks.
I assume you only have a casual contract and not an official one or a bill of sale or similar, so you will probably not win in small claims court. A promise of a sale between friends is not the same as a contract for cash-on-delivery. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty certain your recourse is to eat the loss, and next year, only buy tickets for yourself.
I'm telling you right now, you're not going to get anything from small claims as he never signed a legally binding agreement to pay you. You'll just be pissing away more money.
Don't buy tickets for people in the future without getting money first.
When you buy something for a friend, either get the money up front or be prepared to eat the cost.
If you're doing someone a favor and they aren't reciprocating, you don't have to feel bad if you aren't going to overextend yourself. When he wasn't there / didn't respond on the first day, you could have easily sent him a text / e-mail / message saying "if you don't get back to me by XX:XX, I'm selling your ticket". Your conscience is clear, and you aren't out any money.
I'll be completely honest here - the only thing you've told us about the back and forth with your friend that seems the least bit like bullying is taking a private disagreement into a public forum - at the very least on Facebook and quite possibly on this forum as well. Whatever your 'something clever' may qualify as well.
If you take him to small claims court, you are likely to see the mutual friends you share (if any) disappear as well.
Grow up and let it go, or @Deebaser is 100% correct: any mutual friends you share are probably going to disappear.
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You, however, sound like a bit of a silly goose. By your own admission, you have continually harassed this guy and completely destroyed what I gather was some type of friendship with him over seventy lousy bucks. How many times did you try to contact him over this, and over what period of time? Your initial post gives the impression it was multiple times over a single week. If anybody's behavior in this saga falls into the category of "bullying," it would be yours, and I find your apparent attempt to garner sympathy by bringing up the Ocean Marketing thing bizarre. Not every random person who ever does anything to you that you don't like is a "bully," and it will help nobody, least of all you, for you to entertain the notion that you are being "bullied" every time things don't go your way.
You have no practical legal recourse here. You would lose far too much in fees and time/opportunity cost by pursuing this in small claims court to make it worthwhile even if you did get your chickenshit $70 back. Perhaps you think it's "the principle of the thing." To which I say: get a damn grip.
Teach him a lesson? Write it off as a lesson learned for you. A lesson about getting payment from people up front...especially if you think they may be the type of person who will reneg on paying you money owed, or if you think you may be the type of person who cannot handle people owing you even small amounts of money with maturity.
I realize I sound harsh and I am not trying to rip into you just for the heck of it but you need to take a step back and try to get some perspective on this. You have invested days or weeks of stress, severed a relationship, have considered legal action, and are now trying to concoct some "clever" scheme to get retribution (I don't even want to imagine what you think is "clever" or appropriate) over the sum of $70. I am perplexed by what seems to be a total lack of any sense of proportion here. I will say it again, it is seventy dollars.
I have a friend who currently owes me over $800 and I haven't pursued getting paid back with half the zeal with which you have apparently prosecuted this campaign. As it so happens, I don't need the money pressingly right now, he is in much less fortunate circumstances than me financially, and he has made a good faith effort to pay back some of the amount he owes me. Now, I realize everyone's circumstances are different. But if being out $70 is something that is going to to cause serious financial hardship for you, then I would gently suggest that maybe you need to examine your priorities and decide if it's really wise to be spending money on PAX tickets at all, let alone extra tickets.
Let's look at lessons to learn.
Your friend is a flake.
Get money in advance if you are going to split a purchase with someone especially for tickets, hotel rooms, investments and parties.
The Penny arcade forums are not a good place to air this grievence.
You need to let go a $70 debt.
There is no need to be a dick because a person is a flake.
Almost every person I know has been out some money because a friend wanted to go halves on a purchase and would pay them later.
I agree 100% this is a waste of time, but for posterity: uou don't need to sign anything for there to be a legally binding agreement.
You do need a witness, though, in most cases unless the agreement is amicable.
Nope. What state are you in?
Bowen is talking about practical legal enforcement. If you and I go into a room and say any number of things that may well be legally binding but if I decide I hate you after we leave you have no practical means of bring legal force to bear.
What she said
NYS, verbal agreements are binding, but unless there's a witness or proof of some variety, it has very little practical standing in small claims even. You could just flat out you denied we ever had a deal.
Yes, but here, it isn't just "he-said/he-said", because there is an extensive history of communication between the two.
Most correspondence is. As a practical legal marter, nobody cares. This isn't matlock. And if it was a big deal, you'd just subpoena the Email provider/Facebook.
See, e.g.:
http://www.depo.com/resources/aa_thediscoveryupdate/authenticating_email.html