Gig cancelled
There are any number of reasons why a concert, show or gig might be cancelled.
It could be Adele cancelling due to a sore throat, Green Day abandoning a concert due to rain or Take That cancelling gigs in the wake of the Manchester attack.
If you have forked out hundreds of pounds in tickets, hotels and travel costs what can you recoup?
What happens if the artist cancels?
If the concert is cancelled by the organisers then they have failed to provide you with the item you purchased from them.
If the company that sold you your ticket is part of the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers (STAR) – Ticketmaster and Live Nation both are – then they have signed up to a code of practice that means they should refund at least the face value.
Face value means the amount printed on the ticket and doesn’t include postage or admin fees. The booking fee doesn’t have to be refunded but often is.
Get a refund from your card provider
If you are struggling to get a refund from the ticket provider, and you paid with a credit card, you may be able to claim your money back from your credit card provider.
Under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, credit card providers are ‘jointly liable’ with the ticket seller to refund the money if the seller has breached their contract with you. This only applies though if your ticket cost more than £100.
Just be careful if you paid by PayPal or another third party site as Section 75 may not apply. Read more at Section 75: credit card loophole means shoppers might not be protected.
If you paid with a Visa debit card you may also be able to claim a refund through its Chargeback scheme. This allows payments to be reversed if there is a disputed transaction, but there is a time limit. You must request chargeback within 45 – 180 days of the purchase.
What if you bought from a middleman?
If you didn’t purchase your tickets directly, say you used a broker or bought second-hand tickets, then you may struggle to get a refund.
The event organiser doesn’t have to honour these tickets and certainly won’t refund if you paid a hugely inflated price for the tickets.
What about travel and accommodation costs?
If you’ve forked out for hotels and train fares or other travel costs you won’t be able to recoup these through the event organiser unless you purchased everything through them as part of a package.
However, you may be able to reschedule travel tickets and accommodation costs.
If you have annual travel insurance you may be able to claim your money back through your policy, but this will depend on whether you have cancellation cover and if it applies to the cancellation of an event you were travelling to see. You’ll need to check your policy or speak to your insurer to find out.
What happens if the concert is postponed?
In the event that your concert is postponed rather than cancelled your ticket is still valid, just on the new date. However, if you can’t make the new dates you should be given a refund of the face value of the ticket.
Your best option here is to ring the ticket provider and discuss it with them.
What if the act was late?
Singers can be divas and quite often seem to treat their arrival time on the stage as a barometer of their fame – the bigger the star the later they turn up to sing.
A few years ago, Justin Bieber infuriated fans by not gracing the stage until two hours after the concert start time, 10:30pm on a school night.
As a result, many fans missed the end of his concert as they had to go home. Rihanna and Madonna have both been hours late to their own concerts too, with the latter consistently at least two hours late.
Unfortunately, diva behaviour doesn’t automatically entitle you to a refund. However, you should still complain, particularly if you missed part of the concert as you had to leave at the planned end time.
In this case a strongly worded email or phone call could get the event organiser to make an exception.