Restricted view from premium seat at concert (Hampton Court Palace)

itm2

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105538#Comment_82105538

If neither of those two threats carry any weight, then what else is left for an LBA?

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105530#Comment_82105530

As they said, at the point of sale they were unaware that the band would be putting the monitors there… you can only declare what you know. This was the first time he has ever played there so they dont even have past experience of this artist to go on.

An LBA is explicitly about court action and there is never any point threatening S75 as that is paid for by your bank not the merchant. Even a chargeback may have come out of TicketMaster's pocket not theirs depending on the contracts between the two.

itm2

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105545#Comment_82105545

A court action on what grounds?

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105558#Comment_82105558

I very much doubt you have any, but that hasnt stopped many people from trying and that has caused many to loose heavily on legal costs (google the member here who sued Saga and lost £19k in legal fees)

I was just saying the acronym LBA is normally used in relation to taking legal action not just a general if you dont do X i will do Y type of letter. Plus its normally a threat and threats dont work if you are threatening someone other than you are writting to.

Aylesbury_Duck

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105541#Comment_82105541

Why would they care about a Section 75?

Why would they care about a complaint about Ticketmaster?

You've effectively threatened them that you'll seek compensation from someone else if they don't compensate you. They're hardly going to be worried about that.

An actual LBA to the venue would set out that they are ultimately responsible for the restricted view, that you want them to compensate you with the difference in seating costs and if they don't, then you'll take them to court for that amount.

saajan_12

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105558#Comment_82105558

For whatever Hampton have done wrong - presumably not providing you with a premium, unrestricted seat by allowing it to be covered by a speaker after having sold it (via Ticketmaster) as a premium, unrestricted seat.

Its the same as what a S75 claim would be for, except in this case S75 doesn't apply because there's a 3rd party (Ticketmaster) in the chain.

I do think you have reasonable grounds as above; to take it to the extreme, they couldn't just remove your seat because the band's speaker needed more space and expect you not to attend. However the question will be whether a restricted view is enough of what you paid for and within the natural variation.

Alderbank

This is the speaker in question. I can see that it could have partially obscured the view of some people on the far LHS of the front few rows of the stalls. But I can't see that the ticket sellers could have known in advance which seats (if any) might have been affected. It's an open-air stage, in my opinion no seats have an obstructed view.

LightFlare

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82105501#Comment_82105501

Totally agree

OP - did you raise concerns at the time and/or take any pictures of the obstruction?

itm2

Yes- this was our view. We were quite late to our seats and the first thing we did was look around for alternative empty seats that we could move to - there were none. At least not in the front section (we didn't look further back).

We really didn't want to go hunting for staff, as this would not just have caused us to miss part of the show but would also have caused disruption to the people around us. I'd have thought that ensuring that the top price seats don't have obstructed views should not be the customer's responsibility to resolve - this was entirely avoidable and should have been taken care of by the event organisers.

eskbanker

We went to see Elvis Costello at Hampton Court Palace in June. We paid extra for premium 2nd row tickets from Ticketmaster (the tickets were bought in March). We arrived at our seats just before the show and were annoyed to find that a large monitor speaker at the front of the stage was completely blocking our view of half of the band.

To play devil's advocate, you said you went to see Elvis Costello and your beef is that your view of his backing band was partially obstructed, so if those are the terms you use in your complaints then you might be weakening your case…