Everyone, something happened to me this past weekend at the game that is so egregious that I want all Ags (including grads and all other true Ags at heart) to be aware of it. A couple of days before the game, I posted the sale of 2 tickets on the TexAgs Ticket Exchange posting the location of the tickets, the price, my phone number and my name, and inviting anyone interested to call or text me. Another Aggie (incidentally, also from the Class of '65) telephone me and we almost immediately concluded a sale over the phone, and I electronically transferred the tickets to him with the agreement that he would pay me at the game. My son, two grandsons and I barely arrived before the game and I introduced myself to the buyer. I noticed a surprised look on his face and, after our brief introduction, he told me that he had already paid the full ticket price to someone named John who was sitting in the seat next to him (one of my season ticket seats) when he arrived. Not having yet met me in person, he assumed that this person who identified himself as "John" was me. Unfortunately, he paid the imposter "John" in cash and pretty quickly after he was paid, the imposter "John" left. Obviously, there was no hope of finding this piece of trash in the stadium crowd.
Of course, we all know that there are non-Aggies that post here and on the Ticket Exchange, and I can only hope that this is one of those kinds of people. Virtually every time I have had extra season tickets to sell, I have sold them over the Ticket Exchange (ever since the Ticket Exchange came into existence) and virtually always to Aggies or, occasionally, parents of Aggie students. I have spent enough time in conversation and/or email exchanges with my many buyers to trust that the buyers are who they say they are, and I have been okay with making electronic transfers with the understanding that I will be paid at the game or by mail. Some of you may disagree with me about that practice, but it is important to me to always be able to trust my fellow Aggie brothers and sisters, and know that our Aggie Honor Code still means something. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me.
In the future, more to protect my buyers than anything else, I will encourage them to either pay me by PayPal or check (and I do understand that I could be cheated, but not easily, because any such cheating buyer will be sitting next to me). If, however, we should agree upon payment at the game, henceforth I will agree upon a code word of some sort to be exchanged between the buyer and me. Obviously, there has to be some level of trust between the buyer and seller depending upon whether payment comes first, or ticket transfer comes first.
It is my hope that this information will protect others of you buying and selling tickets in the future. You have to wonder how many other places within the stadium this slime perpetrated the same fraud on others. By the way, I want everyone to know that my buyer is an Aggie in the truest sense and has delivered a check in full payment to me.
