A careless mistake or an unforeseen event can be costly when purchasing show tickets. A CF Montreal supporter recently learned this the hard way. Should event organizers be understanding with some customers who request an exchange or refund?
Annie-Hélène Samson panicked when she saw the receipt for $3,800 land in her email box last February. This Montreal mother had hastily bought tickets to see CF Montreal play a match against Miami CF, as soon as she saw the newsletter telling her that they were on sale. His 16-year-old son and several of his friends wanted to watch star player Lionel Messi defend the colors of the Florida team.
For most matches, you can find tickets for the Quebec soccer club for as little as $39. However, in this case, prices vary between $400 and thousands of dollars on the club’s website.
“I told myself that the tickets were going to go quickly. As I had indicated for six tickets, when I saw the price of $640, I calculated that it was a little over a hundred dollars for each,” says this professor. It was actually $640 per ticket.
She wrote to customer service less than ten minutes after the transaction to request a refund. However, CF Montreal’s policy is clear on this matter: no exchange, credit or refund is possible. This was confirmed by email, then by phone when she called back the sales advisor who had contacted her.
“I said, can you go ask a supervisor, sir? He said he had checked with his supervisor and that it was really impossible,” recalls Ms. Samson.
Her multiple subsequent emails to CF Montreal, in which she pleaded that the situation was causing stress and distress to her family and that her purchase had no commercial purpose, went unanswered.
In recent weeks, Ms. Samson tried in vain to resell her tickets at cost. It must be said that several tickets for this match, some of which are a little cheaper, are still available.
This experience tarnished the relationship she had with the club, which she had encouraged for several years. The supporter group Collectif Impact Montréal, for its part, judged that it was “a shame” that “the club was not a little flexible given the circumstances”, also deploring “the exorbitant price of tickets”.
On Friday, CF Montreal finally promised Ms. Samson to reimburse her, a few hours after being contacted by The duty on this subject. The club, however, justified its non-reimbursement policy by the risk of potential fraud.
“The customer could have resold the tickets and then requested a refund. It is not a tangible product in store. This is why it’s like that everywhere in the ticketing industry,” CF Montreal communicated by email. The club also stressed that “the contents of the basket [virtuel] must be confirmed three times before paying.
A generalized policy
Non-refund policies are indeed widespread in this area, whether we are talking about cultural or sporting events. It is therefore better to be very vigilant and review your shopping cart several times before checking out.
“If you can no longer attend a show, you can still give or resell a ticket,” underlines Alexandre Plourde, lawyer for the organization Option consommateurs.
The Consumer Protection Act does not provide a right to a refund of tickets, except when the event is canceled or modified by the service provider itself.
“Allowing the refund or exchange of tickets would bring great complexity in terms of predictability for show producers,” explains Marie-Claude Lépine, communications manager at Place des Arts, by email.
The Ticketmaster platform offers the customer the option to add cancellation insurance for their tickets to their invoice at the time of purchase. But even having paid for such insurance, the eligible reasons for obtaining reimbursement are restricted to situations such as serious illness or injury, a death in the family or a road accident preventing the event from being reached.
Listening to customers
Despite everything, some event organizers demonstrate openness in order to satisfy their customers. The Théâtre du Rideau Vert, for example, studies requests on a case-by-case basis despite their no-exchange and no-refund policy.
“A person who is very ill or who finds themselves in special circumstances that do not allow them to travel will be accommodated by our ticketing team,” indicates Alice Côté Dupuis, press officer for the theater. The same goes for recent purchasing mistakes; when someone calls us mentioning that they made the wrong date or show when making their purchase, we correct the transaction with them, without problem. »
On the Quebec platform Lepointdevente.com, each organizer has the freedom to decide whether they accept exchanges and refunds. Web Ticketing, which is an independent company, then applies the policy of each of them.
“We sell a large volume of tickets and we have a few refunds to make per day. It’s not major,” specifies the CEO of the platform, Yannick Cimon-Mattar.
The latter understands that organizers must protect themselves, for example to avoid a wave of cancellations for an outdoor festival due to bad weather forecasts. However, he says that the majority of organizers show empathy when customers have legitimate reasons and the request is made well in advance of the event.
“When people test positive for COVID-19, you would rather reimburse them for their ticket than have someone contagious in the audience,” underlines Mr. Cimon-Mattar. The pandemic may therefore have left a favorable legacy for spectators.