File your review. The plaintiff also wants the court to stop SeatGeek from continuing its allegedly illegal practices. 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. If you want to run a photo apart from that story, please request specific permission to license by contacting Digital Engagement Producer Sarah Mirk,smirk@revealnews.org. So many asked variations of the same question: How is this legal?, If we see the same kinds of violations from the same kinds of companies again and again, that tells me that what we have done so far isnt working, said Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, acting FTC chair. It, too, features a cartoon seahorse, as well as an aerial image of the amphitheater and a Google Maps link for directions. New Customers: $10 off your first in-app order of $150+. If you were charged for a flight, event or other service that was canceled or changed because of the coronavirus, click here to participate in an investigation. Customer response. Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQs free email digest of essential live music industry news. 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.. They still had options, of course. Please enter your email address. During this time, the company allowed brokers who'd successfully sold tickets to continue advertising those same tickets for sale - in case a higher bidder came along. You must contact the Once you complete all of the steps, we will send a fax to your bank . Copyright 1997-2023, Ripoff Report. Concert was in June 2020. Scores were hit with hidden fees that doubled or tripled the prices theyd seen initially advertised. The number of them the company has blocked from its site has tripled since 2016, Amy Howe, then Ticketmasters COO, said in congressional testimony last February. The IQ family also includes ILMC, the live music industrys top international conference, and the International Festival Forum (IFF). Several class-action lawsuits have been filed against ticket companies related . SeatGeek as an app and platform to buy tickets is decent, except the fees are pretty damn high. Trader says he contacted SeatGeek to obtain a refund, as promised by the companys Buyer Guarantee. This has got to affect other people, too. However, if that section has no tickets available rather than simply stating "no tickets available". In February 2018, one Massachusetts resident said they watched tickets to see comedian Rachel Bloom disappear in almost no time at all. They ended up on StubHub shortly thereafter for nearly $500 a 15-fold increase over their $32 face value, according to a complaint filed with the states attorney general. Buffalo prevailed, to Penders delight. Photo by DaShaunae Marisa for Reveal. He reportedly tried to receive a refund, but SeatGeek denied to refund his money. Improbably, miraculously, the Bills were headed to the playoffs. Case Summary. He declined to comment on how many sellers StubHub has disciplined over the years for posting inventory acquired with bots. 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. Ticketmaster says it continues to get overrun by bots. RedBall 4 SeatGeek 70. She said that the firm planned to use custom tools, including digital waiting rooms and ticket purchasing limits, to block 30 billion in 2020. It auto suggests is a different section without indicating that is what it's doing. The Judge overseeing this case is Yarbrough, W.M. SeatGeek is the Web's largest event ticket search engine. Its a great thing, he said. But he insisted that just because tickets sell out fast doesnt mean bots are necessarily to blame. 02/22/2023. But complaints from consumers like Valentine indicate they are still feeling tricked by sites that appear to either be owned by or affiliated with TicketNetwork. Almost instantaneously, all the Ryder Cups official inventory was gone. I cant be the first one.. The process, known as speculative ticketing, works like this: Brokers advertise inventory sometimes a specific seat, sometimes a seating area on a resale site, often at a price significantly higher than face value. Long . The way these systems are set up, you make a decision about what ticket you want to buy based on the initial information, and its a few steps down before you realize how much the ticket actually costs, said Anna Laitin, director of financial fairness and legislative strategy at Consumer Reports. IQ publishes a regular magazine, several annual reports, and a daily news digest, IQ Index. Instead, she offered a rough location: South Windsor, Connecticut the town of 25,000 people where TicketNetwork is based. {"requests":{"event":"https:\/\/revealnews.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/newspack-popups\/includes\/..\/api\/campaigns\/index.php"},"triggers":{"trackPageview":{"on":"visible","request":"event","visibilitySpec":{"selector":"#c563","visiblePercentageMin":50,"totalTimeMin":250,"continuousTimeMin":100},"extraUrlParams":{"popup_id":"id_168421","cid":"CLIENT_ID(newspack-cid)"}}}} The law made it illegal to circumvent the security measures that ticket sellers employ. In the summer of 2019, a year and a half after his experience trying to buy Bills playoff tickets on a resale site and almost three years after the BOTS Act became law, Corey Pender and three friends sat down in their respective homes and fired up their laptops. Following backlash from fans and a scathing letter from U.S. representatives, Live Nation updated its refund policy. All rights reserved. Your email address will not be published. Amazon N95 Masks. .top-of-article-prompt{border-bottom:1px solid #cccccc;padding-bottom:32px;}. HURRY! it said, in bright red lettering. Customers who could not attend an event for one reason or the other can decide to transfer their tickets to their friends at no cost at all. So are clever ticket sellers who cash in on unsuspecting customers. The new change in policy already sparked a $5 million lawsuit. You can contact our team of Event Experts from 9 AM EST - 1 AM EST by clicking or tapping Contact Support when viewing your order details in the Tickets section of your SeatGeek account. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. If republishing our stories, please also include this language at the end of the story: This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization. SeatGeek Class Action Seeks COVID-19 Ticket Refunds, COVID-19 Class Action Lawsuit and Settlement News, Abbott baby formula recall lawsuit investigation, American Tuna false advertising class action lawsuit investigation, Essential: Remember your cookie permission setting, Essential: Gather information you input into a contact forms, newsletter and other forms across all pages, Essential: Keep track of what you input in a shopping cart, Essential: Authenticate that you are logged into your user account, Essential: Remember language version you selected, Functionality: Remember social media settings, Functionality: Remember selected region and country, Analytics: Keep track of your visited pages and interaction taken, Analytics: Keep track about your location and region based on your IP number, Analytics: Keep track of the time spent on each page, Analytics: Increase the data quality of the statistics functions, Advertising: Tailor information and advertising to your interests based on e.g. He has not received any indication that this will happen. Click Accept if you consent. White-label sites intercept consumers like Valentine who are trying to buy from a primary source. . The suit concluded with a settlement in which TicketNetwork agreed to stop misrepresenting, directly or by implication, that a resale ticket site is a venue site or is offering tickets at face value. Today, the company maintains it has abided by the consent decrees terms. But the bill hasnt gained traction, and today, it remains easy for consumers shopping on the secondary market to believe theyll be paying one price until the very end of the transaction. The friend nodded. Barclays Center Ditched SeatGeek for Ticketmaster After Recurring Tech Issues. Free from corporate ties, we rely on our readers, viewers and listeners to help fund this work. Federal Trade Commission warned resellers, Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. Companies like his, he added in an interview, drive down prices because they provide ticket buyers more options. Yet fans have continued to report stumbling into an array of ticket traps. Top Class X | CLOSE. The prices seemed a bit steep, but Something Rotten! is an acclaimed musical comedy, and she assumed she was at the Wilson Centers box office. Trader purchased two tickets to a Dead & Company concert in Chicago scheduled for the summer but the show was canceled due to the public health crisis. A 74-page spreadsheet the company produced included more than 4,000 of them: chittychittybangbangonbroadway.com, jerryseinfeldtickets.com, foofighterstickets.info, chicagowhitesoxtickets.org and more. I was sent a confirmation of my purchase and my credit card was hit on 2/13/20 however the tickets were never sent to me. These price gouging lawsuits include: Alaska Man Face Mask. SUPPORT There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. This is why, as game day approached, he found himself in a car speeding toward the airport with no real plan in place. Between Jan. 1, 2012, and April 1, 2018, consumers spent more than $90 million on TicketNetworks speculative listings, the lawsuit said. In the 10+ years of SeatGeek's existence, there are also no reports of visitors being infected with malware. But on TicketNetworks site, hundreds of seats were already available on a color-coded seating map. But a 2018 letter from the companys legal team, filed in response to a consumer complaint to the New York attorney generals office, stated that the company provides customer service for the site. "Mike". His beloved Buffalo Bills had a chance to do something they hadnt done in 17 bedraggled, mismanaged years: clinch a playoff berth. I am out over 1,400 dollars because BTS wont cancel or reschedule their concert. Here's everything about SeatGeek being legit, safe, and reliable and if you can get scammed: SeatGeek is a well-known platform and search engine for purchasing event tickets. Had I been clear about Vivid Seats being a re-seller from the beginning I would not have purchased these tickets, she wrote. Consumers love to do business with someone that can admit mistakes and state how they made improvements. A customer filed the suit Friday, Live Nation Argues Taylor Swift Lawsuits Must Be Arbitrated, KISS Announce Final Shows on End of the Road Tour, Nas & Wu Tang Clan Plot More NY State of Mind Tour Dates, Consumer Groups Launch Campaign for Ticket Buyer Bill of Rights, Foo Fighters Announce First Tour Dates Since Loss of Hawkins, Vivid Seats Slams Ticketmaster-Backed Colorado Bill in Memo, SeatGeek Signs Resale Ticketing Deal With Major League Baseball, Springsteen Fans Complain Again Over Surged Ticket Pricing, Senators Blast Live Nations Trust Us Responses, Call for DOJ Inquiry, USFL Announces Ticket Prices for 2023 Regular Season, Event Ticketing Resources For Secondary and Primary, Seatgeek Sued Over Covid-19 Refund Policy Change, customers would be eligible to receive a voucher, scathing letter from U.S. representatives. 2,372 reviews for SeatGeek, 3.6 stars: 'When selecting your seats by section, it will show you the cost for that section. Ticketing platform SeatGeek announced today that it had raised $238 million privately as part of a Series E funding round. Its just a bad behavior, he said. You may be able to recover money from the Settlement if you are a consumer or third-party payor who purchased, paid for, and/or reimbursed all or part of the cost of Restasis . |. Corporate Advocacy Program: How to repair your business reputation. IQs news, features, information and analysis is read by 100,000 professionals worldwide each month. The FTC sued the reseller and two of its partners in 2014 for knowingly profiting from deceptive venue-mimicking tactics. The partners named in the suit had employed audacious methods to fool consumers into believing theyd arrived at an official venue box office, according to the complaint. .newspack-inline-popup .end-of-article-prompt{border:3px solid #0093ff;padding:1em;}. . Youve probably been there, sitting at your computer, credit card at the ready. 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. Byard Duncan can be reached at bduncan@revealnews.org. Life's an event. The secondary ticketing site SeatGeek was hit with a class-action lawsuit over the weekend regarding its refund policy.. A customer filed the suit Friday, accusing the company of rescinding its money-back guarantee following widespread cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic, The New York Post reports. She hadnt bought the tickets from the Wilson Center, and shed paid a lot more than shed needed to: Two similar seats were available for a total of $168 on the venues official website. But SeatGeek denied to refund his money letter from U.S. representatives, live Nation updated its refund policy a. Cancel or reschedule their concert we rely on our readers, viewers and listeners to help fund this work licensed! 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