Want a refund for your concert ticket? Good luck with that

Ticketmaster has a new enemy: Stan armies.

Anyone who has tried to recoup their money on that delayed Billie Eilish concert knows that “postpone” is a loaded word.

Want a refund for your concert ticket? Good luck with that

Right now, artists have 3 options: cancel, postpone, or reschedule their tours. And while those last 2 might sound similar, they could make the difference between a $200 refund and a very long wait.

Here’s Ticketmaster’s official definition: Rescheduled concerts have gotten new dates, while postponed ones will get moved… but are stuck in limbo right now.

In general, according to Ticketmaster, you’ll only get your money back if the concert is canceled or rescheduled, and those decisions might be left to the organizers.

That has created an impasse: Artists don’t want to cancel or reschedule their tours until they know when this pandemic will end. But you probably won’t get a refund until they do.

Concert tickets are a high-stakes game

If you’ve ever hit up a Rihanna show, you know that securing concert tickets is Southwest check-in on steroids: You have to hunt down presale codes, leave open tabs, set meticulous alarms.

Giving up those seats is not easy. Even when refund offers do come around for postponed concerts, it can be hard to decide: How do you know if you can make the new date when it hasn’t even been announced?

Meanwhile, some ticket marketplaces are getting stingy. StubHub, for one, won’t be giving out cold hard cash. Mass refunds would make for a huge financial hit, so the company is offering a 120% credit instead.

Big Concert is out of options

The mayors of NY and LA are already proclaiming that it’s “difficult to imagine” their cities hosting concerts for the rest of 2020 — a turn of events that will probably cost the live music world billions of dollars.

With a future that bleak, Live Nation — which owns Ticketmaster — is staking its business on drive-in concerts. After seeing Keith Urban and D-Nice dabble with the setup, the company is planning to host drive-in concerts outside of its 40 amphitheaters.

And sure, you can’t exactly mosh in a drive-in, but for $200 tickets, you can… uh, flash your headlights and wildly blare your horns?

Topics: Coronavirus

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