Complaint Review: Box Office Ticket Sales

This company is a secondary market reseller of tickets that I am embarrassed to say I worked for, in other words, they are a ticket broker.  This company not only uses deceptive marketing practices to promote its business, but also advertises falsely.  Poor consumers are lured to use their site by their marketing practices of spending $25,000 - $50,000 a month on SEO marketing to insure that their Google ads comes up first when consumers looking to actually call the various box offices' of the respective venues.  Whenever a consumer does a search for the keywords Box Office, their ad takes the first position and defenseless individuals are prone to call thinking it's the box office.  Likewise, when a customer has found inventory that they are interested in purchasing, they are often lured into calling by an often hard to navigate website designed to get the consumer to call.  Once the consumer calls, the seats that the consumer is interested in, is automatically not available and we were instructed to find different seats of comparable value, whereas we can markup the tickets even more.

 On the website, the company is maxed out at a service fee of 25% and they do indeed discount the tickets to remain competitive.  So the consumer is initially thinking that they are buying tickets that are a good value and then are struck with exuberant service fees.  This organization generates in excess of $20 million dollars annually which can be verified, as they report to the Inc. 5000 and are listed as one of the fastest growing companies in the US.

 Currently their strategy is to utilize their revenues from their well-established web business and redirect it to opening several call centers whereas customers call in presumable to the box offices of their respective venues, to only be duped by highly skilled sales individuals. 

 To add more insult to injury, consumers call in thinking that they are buying from a primary vender and if, and only if the consumer directly asks whether we were located directly at the box office of the venue do we acknowledge the truth.  Also consumers often believe that we actually own the inventory we are selling.  Mr. John Uhrich takes advantage of a strategy often utilized in the financial markets called arbitrage, whereas they find the purchase the tickets after they have already been sold to the consumer.  So in essence they are selling something that they do not own in the first place, only to buy it after they process the transaction with the consumer to leverage their risk of a card declining and being stuck holding inventory.  Matter of fact, part of the sales process is to determine the event and venue then find the primary source and purchase the tickets there.  These purchases are then made on his American Express card, which he then pays off with the monies he collects from the consumer.  And G-d forbid a transaction goes sour, he holds the sales individual accountable with their strict violation policy, whereas they take monies from their commissions.  As for the commissions, the commissions are paid based on the level of margin generated.  So to make a 16% commission on the sale we would have to generate a total of 60% markup on the transaction between the cost of the tickets and the sales price with service fees we charge.  This drives the salesforce to be more aggressive to make a decent living.  The smallest percentage paid is 4%.  So in other words Box Office Ticket Sales retains an average of 84% - 96% of the revenues generated. 

  Now I will discuss their hiring practices.  They do not hire employees directly, as they would then be liable for these employees.  Instead, they hire through staffing agencies, whereas they can hire and fire as they please.  They do not have an adequate training and development program and “throw people into the fire.”  If you do not make it they will fire you indiscriminately.  I have personally seen approximately 10 people come and go in a little over half a year.  Training consists of John Uhrich (CEO figuratively lol) standing over ones shoulders screaming at them and throwing things; otherwise he sits in his office and constantly “screens calls.” 

            All in all this company is a fraud and is growing do to their deceitful business practices and there is no government agency that is stopping them.  So I chose to do the socially responsible and ethical thing of informing the public.  Caveat emptor my dear consumers, caveat emptor