Festival Ticket Issue

Okell

Invader75 said:

born_again said:

PHK said:

born_again said:

PHK said:

The thing is, this is not a physical item (that you sell on) but payment for a service to be performed. In this case you wanted to withdraw. You don't generally have a right to resell access to a service. 

Could be viewed as a physical purchase, you pay for the ticket (like Groupon Voucher) which then gives you a right to redeem as access the festival?

No, the ticket is a representation of your contract. Tickets have the parties name or a reference identifying  them. 

A more obvious example, you couldn't  sell a Certificate of insurance to someone and expect that the insurance would transfer to them. 

Many years ago Ed Sheeran was the 1st to tackle this issue. Especially against ViaGoGo. People turning up at the event with resold tickets were turned away & had to buy new tickets to attend. They were instructed to go via bank to claim the money back & many successful chargebacks were actioned again Viagogo.

How they actually work out the resold tickets I can not remember. But it was very successful & lead to the CMA investigating them.

Thanks for that. I'll look into it. 

What has @born_again said that you can look into?

The example they've given is of people who turned up with resold tickets and were refused entry because the tickets had been invalidated as they had been resold.  But you had valid tickets and simply didn't attend,  so you weren't turned away.

The two situations are entirely different.

Invader75 said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Invader75 said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Invader75 said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

I don't see you have any right to a refund.  Their re-selling policy was clear, and it doesn't matter whether it was strictly adhered to in practice by other people - the fact remained that selling them privately may have resulted in your customer being refused entry.  Insurance was available but you were advised not to take it by other customers, not the retailer.  And not getting a doctor's note blocked that route to a refund.

I can't immediately see what Trading Standards would look into, either.  There's no automatic right to be able to re-sell tickets.  Have they complied with their terms and conditions?

I think you're left appealing for goodwill, I'm afraid.

Just seems a bit out of order that we paid for them, but don't own them enough to sell elsewhere. We had friends who wanted them but weren't able to buy them as the resale site wouldn't provide us with a direct link. 

I've been to plenty of festivals, most of them bigger, in my time since the 90's. Never had this hassle before. 

The fact they wouldn't assist us in any way even though we'd paid for them is harsh IMO. 

I suspect the first point is covered in their terms which you agreed to at the point of sale.  You can see from the current furore around Oasis tickets, that allowing an entirely free market just creates opportunities for touting.

The second and third points are irrelevant when it comes to consumers' rights, I'm afraid.  I suspect that customer behaviour has contributed to less flexibility around re-selling - frankly, the retailer wants a cut of re-sales so closing down private routes helps with that.  They did provide routes of 'escape', but you declined two of them.

We didn't decline any. We missed the cut off but that's viruses for you. Perhaps I should requested a different date to become unwell? 

They refused to, or were unable to, provide a link to our tickets via their reselling site. So that left us with no option to direct anyone to buy our tickets. Who know's if they sold them? There's no way of finding out. 

You were given the opportunity to get insurance, which you declined, and you could have tried to get a doctor's note, but declined to do so.  Those were the two routes I was talking about.

Insurance, as others have stated, is worth SFA unless you're dead or have a terminal disease. We looked into it...

Did you look into it, or did you simply go by what other people told you - which may or may not have been correct.

You said in the OP:  "no, we were advised not to take out insurance by other festival goers who have. Apparently it's only relevant if it's cancer, death or a doctors note..."

Doesn't sound like you looked into it except to ask others.

[Deleted User]

Invader75 said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Invader75 said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Invader75 said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

I don't see you have any right to a refund.  Their re-selling policy was clear, and it doesn't matter whether it was strictly adhered to in practice by other people - the fact remained that selling them privately may have resulted in your customer being refused entry.  Insurance was available but you were advised not to take it by other customers, not the retailer.  And not getting a doctor's note blocked that route to a refund.

I can't immediately see what Trading Standards would look into, either.  There's no automatic right to be able to re-sell tickets.  Have they complied with their terms and conditions?

I think you're left appealing for goodwill, I'm afraid.

Just seems a bit out of order that we paid for them, but don't own them enough to sell elsewhere. We had friends who wanted them but weren't able to buy them as the resale site wouldn't provide us with a direct link. 

I've been to plenty of festivals, most of them bigger, in my time since the 90's. Never had this hassle before. 

The fact they wouldn't assist us in any way even though we'd paid for them is harsh IMO. 

I suspect the first point is covered in their terms which you agreed to at the point of sale.  You can see from the current furore around Oasis tickets, that allowing an entirely free market just creates opportunities for touting.

The second and third points are irrelevant when it comes to consumers' rights, I'm afraid.  I suspect that customer behaviour has contributed to less flexibility around re-selling - frankly, the retailer wants a cut of re-sales so closing down private routes helps with that.  They did provide routes of 'escape', but you declined two of them.

We didn't decline any. We missed the cut off but that's viruses for you. Perhaps I should requested a different date to become unwell? 

They refused to, or were unable to, provide a link to our tickets via their reselling site. So that left us with no option to direct anyone to buy our tickets. Who know's if they sold them? There's no way of finding out. 

You were given the opportunity to get insurance, which you declined, and you could have tried to get a doctor's note, but declined to do so.  Those were the two routes I was talking about.

Insurance, as others have stated, is worth SFA unless you're dead or have a terminal disease. We looked into it. 

I wasn't going to pester my GP for a simple virus and I'm not sure I'd have even got an appointment this side of Christmas. 

Same day online private GP consultations are available for around £50, signed sick notes can be obtained same day for even less (around £25). No need to pester GP or use precious NHS resources.

RefluentBeans

Ultimately - you entered into a contract. You agreed to the terms of this contract. The terms set out what rights you have and in those you should have any information on withdrawing from the contract. Most have some amount of money you will lose if you cancel within certain time points. 

Your reason to cancel may be valid, to you. But if this wasn’t agreed by the other party then it’s kind of meaningless. Unfortunately you have no proof you were ill. You, acknowledged above, could’ve got a doctors note but didn’t. You could’ve taken out insurance but you didn’t. Insurance is the biggest scam going, until you need it; then you’re glad you have it. 

Your only claim is that they couldn’t sell your ticket. Unfortunately for you, there are often insanely high numbers of tickets for people - it’s the reasons touting festival tickets is so much harder. With the exception of a handful of festivals (Glastonbury being one), most still have ticket availability up until a week or two before the festival. If the festival promised you that you they would be able to sell your ticket then you may have a claim. But if they didn’t, then I’m afraid this is the reason you take out insurance. No one plans on getting sick, and I’m sure you several months ago thought you wouldn’t get sick, but unfortunately it did happen. You can self insure if you think that it’s not worth the money via the ticket website. One of my mates does that - goes to load of gigs and doesn’t take out insurance. On the chance they get ill, they take the hit because it would’ve cost them more in insurance fees. 

Unless if you can find a way they’ve failed to uphold their contract, or deprived you of your basic consumer rights, then I think you’ll be fighting an uphill battle. 

user1977

Invader75 said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Invader75 said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

Invader75 said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

I don't see you have any right to a refund.  Their re-selling policy was clear, and it doesn't matter whether it was strictly adhered to in practice by other people - the fact remained that selling them privately may have resulted in your customer being refused entry.  Insurance was available but you were advised not to take it by other customers, not the retailer.  And not getting a doctor's note blocked that route to a refund.

I can't immediately see what Trading Standards would look into, either.  There's no automatic right to be able to re-sell tickets.  Have they complied with their terms and conditions?

I think you're left appealing for goodwill, I'm afraid.

Just seems a bit out of order that we paid for them, but don't own them enough to sell elsewhere. We had friends who wanted them but weren't able to buy them as the resale site wouldn't provide us with a direct link. 

I've been to plenty of festivals, most of them bigger, in my time since the 90's. Never had this hassle before. 

The fact they wouldn't assist us in any way even though we'd paid for them is harsh IMO. 

I suspect the first point is covered in their terms which you agreed to at the point of sale.  You can see from the current furore around Oasis tickets, that allowing an entirely free market just creates opportunities for touting.

The second and third points are irrelevant when it comes to consumers' rights, I'm afraid.  I suspect that customer behaviour has contributed to less flexibility around re-selling - frankly, the retailer wants a cut of re-sales so closing down private routes helps with that.  They did provide routes of 'escape', but you declined two of them.

We didn't decline any. We missed the cut off but that's viruses for you. Perhaps I should requested a different date to become unwell? 

They refused to, or were unable to, provide a link to our tickets via their reselling site. So that left us with no option to direct anyone to buy our tickets. Who know's if they sold them? There's no way of finding out. 

You were given the opportunity to get insurance, which you declined, and you could have tried to get a doctor's note, but declined to do so.  Those were the two routes I was talking about.

Insurance, as others have stated, is worth SFA unless you're dead or have a terminal disease. We looked into it. 

I wasn't going to pester my GP for a simple virus and I'm not sure I'd have even got an appointment this side of Christmas. 

So what do you think ought to happen? Promoters just take the word of punters who claim they didn't turn up because they were sick, and give them all refunds?