Ticketmaster Has Quietly Changed Its Refund Policy (You’re Not Getting Your Money Back)
A couple of weeks back, news surfaced that secondary market ticket sellers like StubHub and Viagogo were suffering a severe cash shortage from customers seeking refunds to events that aren’t going to happen because of the you-know-what, and that they were planning on petitioning the government for a bailout. Now it seems that primary ticketing companies such as Ticketmaster are also struggling to meet the demand of customers who want their money back — or they’d at least like to avoid giving it back if at all possible — so they’ve changed their policy to make it more difficult for fans seeking refunds.
According to this report on Digital Music News, with a substantial number of would-be concertgoers now seeking ticket refunds amidst economic uncertainty in their own lives, Ticketmaster quietly changed their refund policy to cover only “canceled” events, as opposed to those that have been “postponed” or “rescheduled,” and they’re attempting to apply the new policy retroactively to tickets purchased before the coronavirus concert industry meltdown.
Visitors to Ticketmaster’s refund policy page were previously greeted with a message stating that “Refunds are available if your event is postponed, rescheduled, or canceled,” as in the following screen shot:
Visitors to the same page are now told that “Refunds are available if your event is canceled,” with exceptions granted for Major League Baseball and the U.S. Open tennis tournament:
Ticketmaster has set up a special coronavirus page that carefully delineates the differences between events that have been canceled, postponed and rescheduled, and it’s abundantly clear that the company is not planning to entertain refunds for any events in the latter two categories.
For those who can’t attend a rescheduled date because they’ve lost their job, don’t worry, Ticketmaster has you covered: you can use Ticketmaster’s very own reselling platform to unload them! Because demand for tickets for shows a year from now that might or might not happen is so very high right now, and sellers can expect to get top dollar, all while Ticketmaster gets their dick wet on seller fees. Fuck you, Ticketmaster. Give the people refunds!
Fans are understandably upset, with a number of folks railing against the ticketing giant on social media. Last week, a StubHub customer filed a class-action lawsuit against the ticket reseller’s policy of providing site credit worth 120% of the purchase price instead of refunds; could Ticketmaster be facing a similar fate soon?
[via Ghost Cult Mag]
