Realtor sues KREM-TV over winning golf trip

Ed Brown didn’t think winning tickets to the U.S. Open golf championship would cause him such a headache. Now, instead of watching golf pros at their peak, the Spokane Realtor is suing KREM-TV, the television station that distributed the prize, for failing to live up to its part of the deal. He is asking for $3,586 compensation, the estimated cost of the prize package, in small claims court.

KREM said it made every effort to accommodate Brown’s demands but that he chose not to accept the prize, which included entrance to the tournament from June 14 to 17, free airfare to Pittsburgh and a five-night stay in a hotel. KREM Sales and Marketing Director Susan Miller said the station would give Brown two Mariners tickets and two nights of free lodging in Seattle to compensate for his loss, or U.S. Open tickets for next year based on availability.

Brown, who said the airline tickets on the second leg of the trip were mysteriously canceled, does not believe it’s a fair trade.

“We won, and we’re stuck in Spokane,” said Brown. “It was a nightmare from the beginning.”

Brown won the tickets in a drawing offered by StoneRidge Golf Community in May. Brown planned to take his father-in-law, an avid golfer, as a Father’s Day present until he learned what was involved in getting there.

“The arrangements were just so horrible that I thought the guy wouldn’t survive,” said Brown about his 81-year-old in-law. The JetBlue flight from Seattle to Pittsburgh was paid for by New York City-based JMJ Films, the business that donated the tickets to KREM. The trip involved an overnight flight from Seattle, leaving at midnight, and a four-hour layover in New York the next day before arriving in Pittsburgh that afternoon. The flight back to Seattle was a shorter 10-hour trek but arrived too late to make a connection to Spokane.

KREM agreed to pay for the Spokane leg of the trip on Alaska Airlines, but it left early in the morning and meant a 17-hour layover in Seattle. KREM did coordinate an airport hotel in Seattle on the return flight and changed the Seattle flight to later in the afternoon.

Brown’s father-in-law, Chuck Schneider, said it was still too much to handle. “You’ve got to be in good condition to stand up to that type of arrangement,” said Schneider, who bowed out disappointed but looked into a shorter United Airlines flight through Denver. “This was an opportunity I was looking forward to. I love this game of golf, but the (United) tickets were $700 to $800, so I scrapped the whole thing.”

The drama continued. Brown persuaded his wife to attend the event and paid $30 to change the airline reservation into her name. But the day of the departure the couple tried to print their boarding passes for the Pittsburgh leg of the trip and were prevented from doing so.

Brown said they spent the rest of the day on the phone with the airline trying to figure out what happened. He said the airline traced it to a travel agency in New York that accidentally scrapped the reservation. Realizing he could not use the airline or the golf tickets, Brown FedExed the golf tickets to his cousin in Erie, Penn., and exchanged his JetBlue tickets for a flight to New York at a later date.

JMJ Films president and CEO Jim Moskovitz believes the name changes might have caused the confusion and said that no one at his business canceled the tickets. He said they fulfilled their part of the promotional deal by delivering the tickets to KREM.

“The simple reality is there are no nonstop flights from Spokane to Pittsburgh; that’s just how it is,” Moskovitz said. “He just decided not to go on the trip. This lawsuit is the most outrageous thing I have ever heard.”

Miller said that she provided her cell phone number to Brown on the day of the flight and told him to call her if there was a problem, but he did not do so. “Had we known that on that day (of the canceled tickets), I am certain we would have done something,” she said. “We feel we gave him the trip, and he gave it to his cousin.”

KREM offered the Mariners tickets and then tickets to next year’s U.S. Open tour as a goodwill gesture, said Miller. “We gave (Brown) what he has lost out on,” she said.

But Brown said he just wants compensation for a prize he never got. “The bottom line is, I won the prize, and I didn’t get anything, really,” he said. “This should be called ‘when winning is losing.’ ”