Ticketmaster Responds to Uproar Over New “No Refunds” Policy
Ticketmaster has released a statement regarding the uproar over their recently changed refund policy. Unlike in the past, when refunds were available for events that were cancelled or rescheduled/ postponed, the company’s new policy offers refunds solely for cancelled events. Adding insult to injury, the new policy was implemented retroactively — meaning regardless of what the fine print said when you purchased your tickets, the new policy still applies to you.
The TL;DR version of Ticketmaster’s statement: the company says they’re just the middleman, and blames event organizers for the new policy. They also say they believe refunds on rescheduled events may be available eventually.
The actual statement is as follows:
“Ticketmaster serves as the sales platform for event organizers worldwide. Our standard practice is for clients to hold the cash from their ticket sales. Clients using our platform also retain the ability to set individual policies for their postponed or rescheduled events.
“Typically, event organizers have had the flexibility to offer refunds for virtually all postponed and rescheduled events. However, the unprecedented volume of over 30,000 events impacted to date, coupled with continued uncertainty over setting new dates while awaiting clearance from regional governments, has led to event organizers needing additional time to reschedule their events before deciding to offer refund options.
“As of today, over 11,000 events, including over 4,000 postponed sports, concerts and arts events, have already authorized refunds. While we cannot guarantee all event organizers will offer refunds on their rescheduled events, we anticipate the vast majority will make a refund window available once new dates have been determined. In addition, Ticketmaster continues to issue refunds for all canceled events.
“The entire Ticketmaster team is working from home and doing its best to respond to all fans and clients. We will continue to keep fans up to date on the status of events via email and via our Covid-19 event portal.”
This strikes me as a big, steaming crock of shit. Why would event organizers need to know the new dates of their event in order to issue refunds for tickets sold to the original date? I don’t see any logic in it.
More insidiously, I don’t believe Ticketmaster would have been so quiet about implementing this new policy if they hadn’t known it was gonna piss people off.
Anyway. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments section. We’ll see whether or not there actually is “a refund window” for these events at some point.
[via The PRP]
