Beachdown Festival Ticket Refunds
By Mike Ashworth | September 1, 2009
Recently a lot of nonsense has been posted on the net about how to get your money refunded for Beachdown Fesitval, which recently had to cancel at the last moment. The most recent was from Resident Music in Kensington Gardens, Brighton, whose email sought to pass the buck completely.
As a consumer these are your rights, laid down in law.
When you can or can’t get a refund on tickets
You’re entitled to a full refund of the ticket plus, usually, any additional booking fee or service charges, if the event you have booked for is cancelled, rescheduled or altered – a change of location, for example. If an event is rescheduled to another date, your tickets should be valid. If you can’t make the rescheduled date, then you’re entitled to a full refund.
The ticket seller is responsible for giving you your refund on tickets to a cancelled event. This is one of the most important things to remember, the shop, online ticket outlet etc. who you purchased is liable to refund you as your contract is with them, and not Beachdown directly. Of course, if you bought your tickets direct from Beachdown for cash then that is another matter.
Ticket sellers that don’t refund extra fees
Check the ticket seller’s terms and conditions before buying your tickets, as while you’ll get the face value of your ticket back you may be out of pocket on the extra fees charged by your ticket seller.
Some ticket sellers or agents refund booking fees but not the postage fee, as they argue that the transaction has taken place. Ticketmaster refunds its postage charges if the tickets have not been delivered when an event is cancelled.
But some ticket agents, including Gigantic, Seetickets and Stargreen, do not refund any of the extra fees they charge, including booking fees, when events are cancelled or rescheduled.
If you purchased your tickets using a credit card
Section 75 of the consumer credit act may help. You may need to remind your Credit Card provider of their obligations.
There’s a secret phrase that turns any credit card into a financial self-defence superhero. “Section 75” laws means your plastic must protect anything you buy over £100 for free, so if there’s a problem or the company goes bust you can still get your money back.
You can read all about this by following this link http://bit.ly/9h3Pf
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3 Responses to “Beachdown Festival Ticket Refunds”
Comments
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3:16 pm on December 22nd, 2009
In addition to my comments on your other beachdown related post, let me take this opportunity to point out some glaring errors herein.
Given that the beachdown directors had been collecting the ticket monies in person from outlets such as Resident Records, Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 states that companies in this position, acting soley as agents, are in no way liable for refunds or chargebacks: “The business accepting the payment may simply be acting as agent for the supplier, in which case section 75 will not apply”
I am unsure how you arrived at the conclusion that the email you mentioned was “passing the buck”. This phrase seems more particularly suited to the behaviour of the beachdown directors, given their evident happiness with allowing local outlets to deal with angry ticketholders for weeks after the event’s cancellation.
Check your facts before you post them, even on a little-read blog, it doesn’t look good!
11:17 pm on December 30th, 2009
Hi again Alison, thanks for passing by and commenting on my little old blog
In your post “let down by beachdown” it is also unclear about cash versus credit card purchases, but lets put all that to one side for the moment as I have a different observation to make.
It’s about transparency.
I am presuming that this “arrangement” between Resident and Beachdown was unusual, in so much as any other tickets sold at Resident for gigs etc. would be refunded in the event of a cancellation? If this is the case then I wonder if full disclosure was given to those people purchasing tickets from them so they were fully aware? Something along the lines of………
“thanks for purchasing beachdown tickets from Resident. Please be aware that in the event of the fesitval being cancelled, postponed or some other thing not of our doing that Resident will not be refunding your money. If you pay by Credit Card, chargebacks will not be granted because of the unique arrangement between Beachdown and Resident”
Now that is full disclosure as far as I’m concerned. If they wouldn’t do this because they would fear people would not purchase tickets from them then you’d have to ask the question “perhaps this unique arrangement needs closer inspection”.
Tracking back a bit further from this, perhaps Resident need to think very carefully before taking on the selling of tickets for an event as it is also their brand that gets dragged through the mud when things go wrong.
If I were running a ticket outlet and the arrangement asked of me was that any monies would be picked up in person by the Festival staff at the end of each day, this would have me feeling very nervous. Managing risk, something that many businesses don’t do until they’ve had their fingers burned.
8:27 am on May 1st, 2010
I understand that someone has been paid out by their credit card company under section 75.
Apparently, the credit card company in question kept refusing, saying they weren’t responsible under Section 75.
The person write to the Financial Ombudsman to investigate the case, after which the credit card company coughed up pretty sharpish.