The suit, which alleges that SeatGeek rescinded its money-back guarantee amid the widespread cancellation of live events, comes three weeks after similar legal action was initiated against ticket-resale rival StubHub, which is also offering credit instead of cash refunds for cancelled or postponed events. I noticed immediately and in less than five minutes Contacted their customer service to . As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work with as many people as possible. Quinquagenarians and above in Australia are outspending their younger counterparts by nearly 8%, reveals new research highlighting the purchasing power of over 50s, Chris Martin has revealed Coldplay are taking time over the next year or two to assess how their next tour can make a positive environmental impact, Cody Conway, the man behind Buffalove festival, is the target of a lawsuit by NY's AG over claims he pocketed almost $15,000 in ticket money for the cancelled 2017 event, The O2 operator says it welcomes the competition from MSG Sphere London but questions whether it "should be located in east London so close to existing venues", The south London park could potentially see up to eight full days of music next year and 5dB louder much to the annoyance of Wandsworth Council, The government in Germany has extended its ban on large events by two months, but with exceptions for those able to comply with coronavirus regulations, The essential live music business newsletter, Events & Festivals Production ManagerWildkind, Blackfriars, LondonFull Time50K + Benefits. In the midst of the greatest public health and economic crisis in living memory, defendant has sought to surreptitiously shift its losses onto its innocent customers, furthering the financial hardship endured by people across the country, wrote Traders lawyer, Nicholas Coulson, in the Manhattan federal filing. Then brokers fulfill their speculative sales by buying directly from venues like Granthams at cost often not until a consumer has already purchased the tickets at a premium. In an interview, Don Vaccaro, CEO of TicketNetwork, the platform where Pender bought a ticket that never materialized, said, I dont think weve had a complaint in the longest time from anyone. And he pointed out that the primary market has its own share of problems. However, this can result in some functions no longer being available. The secondary ticketing site SeatGeek was hit with a class-action lawsuit over the weekend regarding its refund policy. Follow him on Twitter: @ByardDuncan. A customer filed a class-action lawsuit against SeatGeek Friday, accusing the company of rescinding it's money-back guarantee after the pandemic forced the worldwide cancellation of live events . Its just a bad behavior, he said. You must contact the Billy Beane-backed RedBall raised US$575 million in 2020 with the intention of acquiring a business in the sports, media and analytics sectors and agreed a deal with SeatGeek Legislation introduced by Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., in 2019 would require the same for ticketing. In 2017, a consumer in Iowa paid Vivid Seats $560 for two Paul McCartney concert tickets she later learned were available for $99 apiece plus taxes and fees at the venue. You can safely do transactions without fearing a virus or becoming . April 28, 2020 Similarly, the highest price for a show called Dinosaur World Live was $46.96 at the Wilson Center. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Last Updated on April 28, 2020 by Olivia Perreault. administrator or law firm. Top Class Once there, she selected two $150 seats and began the checkout process. SeatGeek.com, launched in 2009, is a legit ticket platform that has sold millions of tickets for 10+ years, but there are some negative reviews saying it wasn't the most reliable site. Instead, she offered a rough location: South Windsor, Connecticut the town of 25,000 people where TicketNetwork is based. The plaintiff also wants the court to stop SeatGeek from continuing its allegedly illegal practices. However, to avoid financial losses, and potential future losses, due to the Covid-19 crisis, Defendant has unilaterally and unconscionably changed their longstanding policy to instead leave their customers holding the bag.. Has your experience with this business or person been good? The company has a valuation of $1 billion, according to the release. . All Rights Reserved. document.getElementById( "ak_js_5" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); @2023 Top Class Actions. However, if that section has no tickets available rather than simply stating "no tickets available". X | CLOSE. Reveal often uses photos we purchase from Getty and The Associated Press; those are not available for republication. Near the dawn of the Enlightenment era, members of Englands upper class would send servants to hold their seats for hours before plays began. My brothers were trying to do it. Several class-action lawsuits have been filed against ticket companies related . He bought two, at a cost of $150 each. https://topclassactions.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php. Byard Duncan is a reporter and producer for engagement and collaborations for Reveal. I had other friends that were doing it with a group. I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to see that my ticket also included a $140.65 service fee a 32% markup over the advertised total. Ahead of a July 2015 U2 concert in New York, a single bot purchased 1,012 tickets from vendors in one minute. High on their list of concerns were unreasonable and hidden fees!. Decide if you want DoNotPay to send a dispute letter for you. This is a marketplace where its very easy to confuse consumers and give them bad information., In February 2020, leaders in the secondary ticket market were called before Congress to explain their fees. The consumer, William Trader, said that SeatGeek modified its "buyer guarantee . IQ publishes a regular magazine, several annual reports, and a daily news digest, IQ Index. If you plan to republish our content, you must notify us republish@revealnews.orgor email Sarah Mirk,smirk@revealnews.org. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Top Class Actions is a Proud Member of the American Bar Association, Various Trademarks held by their respective owners. This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 10/15/2021 09:41 AM and is a permanent record located here: Following backlash from fans and a scathing letter from U.S. representatives, Live Nation updated its refund policy. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting filed public records requests for 10 years worth of complaints to every state attorney generals office in the country and to the FTC. They also needed the Cincinnati Bengals to beat a gritty and determined Baltimore Ravens team that was one win away from securing its own playoff spot. settlement administrator or your attorney for any updates regarding SeatGeek's net revenues reached a new company record, with Q4 2021 net revenue rising to $82.5 million, up approximately 45% from $56.8 million in Q3 2021 and versus $4.8 million in Q4 2020 . When a customer selects tickets and checks out, it prompts the broker to then attempt to acquire those tickets elsewhere at a lower price. Ticketmaster says it continues to get overrun by bots. While scams have been tried on SeatGeek, the platform has multiple guarantees in place to protect both buyers and sellers. In general, it is legitimate, safe, and reliable. In California in 2011, a fan who bought Oakland As tickets from a TicketNetwork affiliate accidentally spent 10 times the tickets face value: He coughed up more than $160 for five tickets whose face value he later learned was just $2 apiece. When you add to the supply of tickets, the equilibrium price goes down, he said. Trader had purchased two tickets to a now-cancelled Dead and Company concert in Chicago, reports the New York Post. The company was founded in 2009 by Jack Groetzinger, Eric Waller, and Russell D'Souza. Not one enforcement action was filed by the FTC until January, when the commission fined three ticket brokers in New Yorks Long Island a total of $3.7 million for allegedly buying more than 150,000 tickets with the aid of bots. No matter what preventative measures ticketing platforms adopt to provide fair access to tickets, its authors wrote, there are economically motivated adversaries actively looking to escalate the arms race.. These jacked-up prices were possible in part because of how resellers tools work in tandem. It also forbade the resale of tickets purchased with bots in a variety of circumstances. Byard Duncan can be reached at bduncan@revealnews.org. Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Amazon N95 Masks. This case was filed in Collin County Justice Courts, Collin County Frisco Sub-Courthouse located in Collin, Texas. The event was later canceled because of coronavirus concerns. All rights reserved. Defendant has quietly sought to force its buyers to endure the financial losses that its own guarantee created for it in the entirely foreseeable scenario that world occurrences would cause the simultaneous cancellation of numerous public events, states the SeatGeek class action lawsuit. Bogus Celebrity Advertisements FACE & Skin CREAM Ripoff! But, what I'm reviewing . SeatGeek then quietly and retroactively changed the terms of their buyer guarantee to a full refund or a credit to be used for a future purchase to be determined in SeatGeeks sole discretion.. Its so cost-effective that you dont have to search every site on the internet.. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from the rest. Decide which cookies you want to allow. If they cant, the broker will either have to make good on the initial offer and take a loss or renege on the sale. 7,234 talking about this. Dont click on those slick Ads! Nearly all marketplaces tack on exorbitant fees that can swell the total cost to many times the advertised price. Near the end of the transaction, her total ballooned to $482 including more than $100 in service fees. These bots hurtle across websites at lightning speed, tricking CAPTCHA tools and scooping up huge bundles of inventory. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. The FTCs 2010 warning letter made it clear that a failure by ticket resale companies to disclose when brokers dont have tickets theyre advertising as in-hand may be a violation of federal law. Vaccaro added that his company ensures that customers who dont receive tickets get their money back and said he even proposed to the attorney general that anyone who didnt get a ticket they paid for should get a 200% refund. Additionally, Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster revealed that it would only refund customers for cancelled or rescheduled events, however, many postponed shows have no reschedule date in sight. These price gouging lawsuits include: Alaska Man Face Mask. You are free to embed our audio and video content and republish any written story for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license and will indemnify our content as long as you strictly follow these guidelines: Do not change the story. In 2010, following a lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its affiliates, the Federal Trade Commission warned resellers that failing to clearly disclose listings as speculative may violate the law. New Customers: $10 off your first in-app order of $150+. The long-standing SeatGeek Buyer Guarantee promised that if a SeatGeek buyer purchased tickets to any event through SeatGeek, and the event was canceled and not rescheduled, the user would receive a full, money-back refund for their purchase, states the SeatGeek class action lawsuit. This was taken care of at the time after many . Taking on powerful interests demands lots of time, a strong backbone andyoursupport. TicketNews has affiliate links in some of its posts - it may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase tickets or other products. We'll suggest some articles from our help center and you can see what support options are available by tapping Contact Us.. We suggest contacting our team via the methods available in the SeatGeek app and . Case Summary. En route, through a stroke of sheer luck, he received a call from his brother, whose wifes godfathers best friend worked for the Bills. I felt totally cheated.. Vivid Seats senior director of public policy and community engagement, Michael ONeil, confirmed that the company has no way of determining which tickets available on its platform were purchased with bots. Ticket resale is no longer driven by fast-talkers peddling their wares outside U.S. arenas. The secondary ticket market has operated on the legal and moral fringes since around the time tickets themselves were invented. Meanwhile, as the minutes ticked down in Baltimore, the Bengals hung in. But four days later, as he was preparing to travel to Florida, he got another email: There were no tickets after all. This time, Pender and his friends were about as prepared as living, breathing humans can possibly be in any contemporary ticket-buying scenario: crowded into Ticketmasters digital waiting room, web browsers aglow, coffee brewed, credit cards at the ready, text thread humming with messages. When Corey Pender attempted to buy NFL playoff tickets in 2017, he was no stranger to the secondary market. Say yes. A 74-page spreadsheet the company produced included more than 4,000 of them: chittychittybangbangonbroadway.com, jerryseinfeldtickets.com, foofighterstickets.info, chicagowhitesoxtickets.org and more. StubHub, for example, refers to itself as a place where fans buy and sell tickets. Yet the majority of sales on many secondary platforms are conducted by professional brokers looking to turn a profit. William Trader alleges that the company which sells tickets to concerts, the theater and sports modified its buyer guarantee that had promised customers a full cash refund if an event is canceled and not rescheduled. Almost instantaneously, all the Ryder Cups official inventory was gone. Yeah, lets go.. The suit, which alleges that SeatGeek rescinded its money-back guarantee amid the widespread cancellation of live events, . Sac_County Iowa Prosecutor Ben Smith pays $750,000 to settle Ripoff Report 1983 civil rights lawsuit.. Federal Judge stops prosecutors abuse of power against ED Magedson Founder of Ripoff Report. We've received your submission. Our reporter(s) must be bylined. Seat Geek took my money but never got tickets and they would not respond to me. Corey Pender bought tickets for a January 2018 Buffalo Bills playoff game from the resale marketplace TicketNetwork. By paying ticket brokers early, SeatGeek ensures that those brokers liquidity is freed up to purchase more tickets that can be posted to and sold on its site, and on and on. Brad Glasser, StubHubs director of global communications, said the companys user agreement requires sellers to abide by all applicable laws, including those that forbid the use of bots. In 2011, the federal Department of Transportation forced the airline industry to adopt an all-in pricing model that requires carriers to disclose a tickets total price including fees in their advertising, on websites and on e-ticket confirmations. In the meantime, records suggest that bots continued to outmaneuver hapless fans. Im like, just buy them. Buffalo prevailed, to Penders delight. Skip to Content. Tickets for the Ryder Cup, an international mens golf competition, were slated to go on sale in minutes. SeatGeek is entitled, except to the extent prohibited by applicable law, to disclose any information or materials on or in SeatGeek Properties in SeatGeek's possession in connection with your use of SeatGeek Properties, to (1) comply with applicable laws, legal process or governmental request; (2) enforce the Terms, (3) respond to your . The friend nodded. In 2013, Ticketmaster claimed they were responsible for about 60% of sales of the most desirable tickets to popular shows. 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