So after Jessie J cancelled her Ponty Big Weekend appearance in July 2012, I awaited my refund from Seetickets as was the case in their email.
This was sent 1546 that Friday afternoon that Jessie pulled out of Ponty
We regret to inform you that PONTY’S BIG WEEKEND – JESSIE J at Ynysangharad Park, Pontypridd on 20/07/2012 has been cancelled due to illness.
Further information will follow regarding whether there will be an rescheduled date for this concert.
Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused by this and if you have any query regarding your order please contact us at http://www.seetickets.com/CustomerService.
Pretty much “She’s cancelled…we’re delaying the refund”
Then on the Monday
Dear MR P DOWNES
We regret to inform you that PONTY’S BIG WEEKEND – JESSIE J at Ynysangharad Park, Pontypridd on 20/07/2012 has been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.
A face value refund will be credited to the card used to make the booking and tickets are not required to be returned.
Please accpet our apologies for any inconvenience caused and if you have any further query please contact us at http://www.seetickets.com/CustomerService
I’ve kept in the spelling mistakes – just to make them look even more stupid.
Anyway, time passed and I had money back into my account. £40. Not the £52.50 I spent on two tickets.
So, I thought, I ask the question of the missing £12.50. I tweet’d Seetickets, all I got asked was “what was my reference number” and to DM it. I did, and got no response. So another two weeks passed and I email them direct via their website. Here’s their reply;
Dear MR P DOWNES
Thank you for your email regarding the refund for your order XXXXXXXXX for PONTY’S BIG WEEKEND – JESSIE J at Ynysangharad Park Pontypridd.
As a ticket agency, we sell tickets to the general public on behalf of the promoters of an event. The decision to cancel or postpone a concert is that of the promoters and is completely beyond our control. When an event is cancelled or postponed, we inform all of our customers whom have purchased tickets of the alteration by phone, letter or email.
Each ticket that we sell carries a booking fee and a transaction fee. The booking fee pays for our services – the business costs of operating a web- site and 24-hour call centre, Customer Service department and Despatch teams – and is the only payment that See receive for operating. A transaction fee covers the cost of printing, packaging and postage for your tickets. When a show is cancelled or postponed, these fees are retained as See has still provided these services, and cannot issue a refund for them. This is all detailed in our terms & conditions which you are asked to read at the time of booking.
Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Kind regards,
See Tickets Customer Services
Aside from the word is spelt DISPATCH not despatch (idiots). How many people actually read the T&C’s whilst booking tickets? Seriously? How rubbish are some websites with bandwidth that it takes ages to get through, the last thing you as a customer thinks about is “oh, I wonder what would happen if the gig was cancelled”.
It’s not the first time this has happened to me either, it happened when Adele cancelled her rescheduled gig in Cardiff in 2011.
I don’t want this blog to be a whiney one in which I’m griping about my £12.50 (well I am granted), but it’s more to do with the lack of communication. And I’m sure as a company, Seetickets has in place insurance policies if concerts get cancelled. £6.25 per ticket is a rip off anyway, but to give me the line of “The booking fee pays for our services – the business costs of operating a web- site and 24-hour call centre”, surely the cost of being a company that is disengenius with your customers and treats customers like idiots, is more valuable than that £6.25 per ticket.
Yes, I realise the booking fee/standard fee/carriage fee system is one of the biggest rip off there is within the ticket industry (with a few exceptions, Wales Millennium Centre, St Davids Hall, Muni Arts Centre Pontypridd), but my point is, if a gig is cancelled – there’s insurance to cover all the costs? That should mean ALL costs to the paying public?
Anyway, enough for now – but what do you think about the costs of booking fees? What’s the most expensive fee you’ve paid, and the cheapest? Comment below