Confessions of a failed ticket broker

I was once considered to be one of the top 20 ticket brokers in the USA. I had everything going for me as far as the ticket broker industry went. Several employees, a store front, a great website and millions in profits each year. But that all ended in a blaze of glory due to my naive actions during one superbowl. Sure I made millions of profits each year, but as any ticket broker can tell you, that’s not all take-home. I had to pay employees, advertisement and marketing, buy the tickets and still pay many other bills.

So during this particular superbowl, I had a dream order come in. It was a six-figure order that when I received it I hardly believed it. I immediately called the customer and started going through the motions of getting their driver’s license and everything needed faxed to me and after a couple days of checking and researching and verifying this person wanted the order via phone calls, I finally processed the credit card and shipped the tickets.

The order was pretty close to the superbowl so after the superbowl it happened. Chargeback… My heart fell out of my chest when I saw my bank statement and received the chargeback letter from AMEX. I immediately got my lawyer and started the process of fighting it but to make a long story short it turned out the son used the father’s credit card and I lost fight. The six figures made all my credit cards start bouncing. All my orders out there, and I received many orders back in the day, failed. I had a shitload of brokers calling me. The exchange I was with blocked me and Iw as out of business.

So my warning would be, if at all possible, never run an order above $5000. And if you have to take an oder above your comfort zone, get a check, money order or certified bank check. Even if you do lose you can handle it.