NHL: Stanley Cup Playoffs-Montreal Canadiens at New York Rangers

Kavi Arora wants to be part of a celebration like this in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, and thought he had purchased four tickets for $12 on Stubhub.

(Andy Marlin/USA Today)

Kavi Arora wondered if he was delirious from a Rangers Game 7 victory over the Penguins in the Eastern Conference semifinals, or if he had fallen asleep and already had started dreaming.

He had logged onto the StubHub app on his smartphone, just on a lark, to see how the tickets were priced for the Stanley Cup Finals, even though there was no guarantee his favorite team would make it that far. He found four tickets in Section 111 for Game 6 at Madison Square Garden – primo seats, to say the least – for a price that gave him a much different kind of sticker shock.

Twelve bucks.

Not twelve thousand bucks. For what would nearly be the price of one beer at MSG, he could take three of his best buddies to what could end up being the Cup clincher in Manhattan.

Yeah. He clicked “buy.” He immediately received a confirmation email – the price of the tickets was $1 each with $8.20 in service fees – and went to bed the happiest/luckiest guy in Jersey.

“I'm a diehard Rangers fan,” said Arora, a 2009 Rutgers graduate and a Hoboken resident. “Their run to the Cup (finals) is the best thing that's happened to me all year. This would be the opportunity of a lifetime.”

You probably know where this is headed. The next morning, he received an email from StubHub telling him that the tickets was canceled because the seller was “unable to fulfill the order.” He was furious, but remembered that StubHub always brags about its “FanProtect Guarantee.”

If the seller backs out, the company promises to provide the buyer with comparable seats or a refund. StubHub offered – surprise! – to give back his $12, but said that there were no comparable seats at that price. The company then offered to give him a $300 voucher for his trouble, but Arora wasn't budging.

He wants his seats.

Stubhub is not budging.

The receipt from Stubhub, showing that he had four tickets in Section 111 for Game 6 ... for just $12.20.

“It basically looks like the tickets were listed in error, that the seller meant to list them for $1,000 and instead listed them for a dollar,” said Alison Salcedo, the head of U.S. communications for the company. “The FanProtect Guarantee protects the buyer and the seller.”

Salcedo said since four comparable seats were not available for $1 – to the contrary, two seats for Game 6 in Section 111 were selling for $21,003 on the site – that the refund and $300 voucher were “more than fair compensation.”

Arora's response to that: It isn't his fault the seller screwed up, and try telling a lifelong Rangers fan that anything other than a ticket inside the building is fair compensation when the team has won exactly one Stanley Cup in the past 74 years.

Besides, Arora points out, a similar situation happened in Boston last fall, when a Red Sox fan named Erik Jabs bought a $6 ticket to Game 1. It turned out to be a fake, but after Deadspin picked up his tweets about Stubhub reneging on the ticket, the company gave him a ticket anyway.

Arora hopes a little pressure – Jabs's story ended up on Good Morning America, not to mention on several Boston media outlets – might make Stubhub reconsider. He has sought the advice of a lawyer, but knows any legal process would drag out far past the Cup finals.