My husband and I are long time ticket holders to our city’s ATP 1000 Masters tennis tournament. If you’re not familiar, these events are one rung below the Grand Slam tournaments, and will draw the biggest names in tennis.
Last winter, because we weren’t going to be in town for the 2020 finals, we donated our tickets to a charitable event near and dear to our hearts. Our gift basket included 2 finals tickets (~$175 each if you buy them a la carte or via StubHub, but ~$100 to us because we get a series discount), a $100 Visa card, and tennis paraphernalia worth ~$100.
Since we normally don’t receive the actual tickets until July, the winner contacted us with his contact information so that we could mail the tickets to him once we received them. And all was good with the world.
Then COVID came along. The tournament was moved to NYC, with no spectators. So essentially worthless from his POV.
When I received word of this, I emailed the raffle winner and told him what had happened as I have nothing to give him. Since it was a Chinese raffle (you buy tickets and put them into baskets, and a winner is drawn randomly for all the entries), I asked him how much he’d spent on tickets, thinking that I could at least reimburse him for how much he paid.
His reply? “I think I spent about $400 on tickets.”
Seriously?
I sincerely doubt that. While I don’t want to be screwed, I do want to be fair. FYI, the money I paid for 2020 tickets will be applied towards 2021 tickets, so I’m not out anything on the tickets.
So if you were the winner of this basket, what would you expect?
First off. YOU aren’t responsible. The only reason you’re even remotely involved is because you didn’t have the physical tickets in hand when the raffle happened. If you had given the charity the tickets and the winner got them with the basket and the event was cancelled, it wouldn’t be your problem.
I think you just apologize but firmly explain that this is not only out of your control, but it’s not that the raffle place bought the tickets from you. That is, you didn’t receive any money for doing this and you shouldn’t feel obligated to make good on it.
I think, if anything, he should go back to whomever he paid to enter the raffle and work something out with them.
Besides, it was a raffle, not an auction. He’d would’ve walked away empty handed if his ticket wasn’t chosen.
So, the way I see it you have two options. Offer him the 2021 tickets or apologize and explain there’s nothing you can do about it and direct him towards the raffle people if he has any further questions. I’d go with the latter. This is way out of your hands.
I would expect nothing, as it was a charity event. The raffle winner donated to the charity, which should be the whole point, and still walked away with something of value.
You are under no obligation to reimburse the winner for however many raffle tickets they bought. A nice gesture might be to award them the amount you paid for the tennis tickets, as you were expecting to be out that much anyway. You don’t even have to do that, especially if they’re being jerky about it, and absolutely no need to be guilted into any more.
Why? It’s a charitable auction - people overbid all the time. Everything beyond the value of the items you win is a charitable donation.
If it were me, I’d chalk it up to COVID, and write the whole thing off as a charitable donation. If I were the Development Director, I’d offer the donor to either make the entire bid be a donation, be reimbursed for the face value of the tickets, or find a way to find 2021 tickets through you if possible.
My inclination would be to just write it off as an unavoidable situation, and forget about it. I generally do not buy charity raffle tickets expecting to win anyway, it’s just a donation to the cause.
You, as the prize donor, have no responsibility to do anything as far as I can tell. You can’t deliver tickets you don’t have. If the guy demands some form of compensation, I’d refer him to whoever sponsored the raffle.
Hopefully, the winner is thinking “I wonder why she asked me how much I spent on tickets?” not “I spent $400 on this and I’m determined to get at least that amount of benefit.”. It seems it was a raffle, not an auction, so he could have spent $400 and got nothing. I would say you are under no obligation to offer anything other than your commiserations that part of the intended prize cannot now be awarded.
However, another way of looking at it is that you were expecting to spend an additional $100 on your prize donation which will now not be part of the package, so you could offer $100 cash in addition to the rest of the prize package in lieu of the tickets - I think this would be more than fair. Alternatively, offer the 2021 tickets. Whether the winner spent $1 or $10,000 on tickets is completely irrelevant, either way this should definitely leave you with a clear conscience. Good on you for trying to make it right, your only mistake was in asking how much he had spent, and it’s not an irretrievable one. If he thinks you (or the organisers) somehow owe him that, he’s an ass and not worth worrying about anyway.
I would add that in the future it would be a good idea to have the charity organizer to act as a go-between escrow agent so that you as the donator do not have the responsibility of communicating with the winner directly. Then it is on them for obtaining your donation, and conveying the prize to the winner. Then you would be relieved of this moral conundrum, and avoid any possibility for bad feelings.
If I were the winner, I’m not sure I would expect anything. But the most I would expect ( and what I would do as the donor) would be the refund value of the tickets.
As the winner, I would expect whatever other holders of the tickets got. In your case, it sounds like you’re effectively getting tickets to an event next year, as would anyone else who had bought the tickets outright. So, that’s what the winner should get.
This is complicated by the fact that you gave away tickets that you didn’t expect to use this year, but you might want to use the replacements next year. But I think that the right thing to do is to give the winner the value of the tickets to you. If you are going to save $200 by not having to buy tickets next year, then you should give the winner that $200, or offer to give them the tickets to the next year’s event, and buy yourself new ones if you want to go.
I think this is a good opportunity for the non-profit to build a connection with the organizer of the ATP 1000 Masters tournament. Events like that always have tickets set aside for donations and corporate events - that’s a very easy ask, considering the situation.
Thanks for the responses. Since the winner had already received the rest of the basket ($100 gift card and $100 in merchandise), I offered to Venmo him $200, and he accepted. I know that technically I wasn’t on the hook for anything, but I wanted to make it as right as I could. Do unto others and all that.
You did well and can now have a more than clear conscience about the whole thing. For me, like you, that is worth $200 (though of course we’re very privileged to be in that position financially). Thanks for the update.
It doesn’t matter how much the winner spent on tickets, only one of them won. I’d reimburse the son of a bitch for the one ticket and call it a day. No seriously, if it were me I’d call force majeure on the whole thing and give the winner nothing.
Something similar happened to me once. I won a door prize at a charity event, a $50 gift certificate to a restaurant that closed suddenly before we could use it. There was a phone number to call about gift certificates but surprisingly no one ever answered. I never would have expected anyone from the charity to make good, but your solution was a classy one.
no one ever answered. I never would have expected anyone from the charity to make good, but your solution was a classy one.