Topticketshop.com is an internet site that looks legitimate...it's very professional-looking. There are lots of tickets on offer, they list a dozen or so cities in which they have 'offices' (e.g. London, Barcelona, Paris, New York, etc), as well as contact details, though I think they are based in Spain.

Wanting to go to the French Open (tennis), I visited their website, where they showed that they had seats available in the section I was looking for (very front section...best seats).

Using my credit card, I paid a lot of $$$ for these tickets. The company policy is to deliver the tickets to your local address (in our case, a hotel in Paris) within 3-10 business days before the event. The tickets arrived at my hotel the day before, but then I noticed that the seats were in the furthest section, not the closest section.

The price of these tickets should have been less than 50% of the price I paid for them. I tried to contact the company using one of the many phone numbers listed on their website, but no one was answering phones. I ended up going to the event and paying an additional 80 euros per ticket to a street scalper to trade my tickets for better seats.

Since then (11 days), I've tried several times to contact them by e-mail to ask for a refund, but my e-mails remain unanswered. Apparently, the phone numbers are there for show, because I've also tried to call about 50 times and only gotten through twice...same lady both times...must be a very small shop. She basically told me that their 'terms and conditions' allow them to downgrade the ticket if they are not available (despite the fact that when I first purchased them, they showed that they were available) and offer a refund for the price difference.

She said I needed to send them the information in an e-mail (again), despite the fact that they have all my order information on hand and know exactly what tickets they sent me. With a legitimate company, the refund would have been made automatically and immediately. When I explained that I had already sent several e-mails over the last week and gotten no reply, she said that she couldn't help me, there was no one else I could speak with, and then she hung up on me.

Given that I have yet to receive a written response and that the lady with whom I spoke appears to be the only person answering the phones (when she, in fact, does answer them), I'm not expecting any refund.

I wish there was some recourse for me. This was such a ripoff, and if nothing else, I want to spread the word to watch out for these scam artists.

First and foremost, topticketshop.com should immediately refund the difference between the price they charged me for the best seats (category 1, according to their website) and the price for the bad seats on the tickets they sent (category 2, according to their website). Not to send the refund is tantamount to fraud and counter to the "terms and conditions" on their own website.

Besides this, though, there are several problems with topticketshop.com that don't fit neatly in your category boxes:
1) False advertising, part I: When I purchased the tickets about 6 weeks in advance of the event, they showed the seating that I requested as being available. That's why I bought from them -- as opposed to another company -- in the first place.
2) False advertising, part II: The website lists about a dozen or so phone numbers around the world, apparently to their local offices. I imagine they are doing this to appear professional, because I phone each one of them a total of probably 50 or more times, and I only got through 2 times, both to the same woman. Offices in all those international cities? I don't think so...
3) Customer service: So far, not only have they not answered my e-mails requesting refund, but when I did reach the woman on one of my attempts, she was unhelpful and even beligerent.