Jananas

Back in February, I’d asked Jason to buy me tickets to see Flight of the Conchords for one of their Toronto dates in April. I can’t remember the exact reasoning, but I was unable to be at a computer when they went on sale and I was worried that they’d sell out. So he, being the exceedingly nice person that he is, woke up early one day to purchase tickets for me. He used his American ticketmaster account and his Canadian credit card (he’s an authorized user on one of my accounts so that he doesn’t have to pay foreign exchange fees). Sadly, because he purchased tickets to a Canadian show on an American ticketmaster account his only option was to pick them up the day of the show through will call. Fast forward a month or so, and with travel plans he’s not going to be in Toronto the day of the concert and so will be unable to pick them up.

On March 17th he emails ticketmaster to see if we can arrange an alternate delivery method for the tickets – picking them up in advance, mailing, or printing out at home. He received this response on March 19th:

So, we’ve paid for “premium” tickets but can’t arrange another way to get them. Jason wrote back that day as this didn’t really answer our question. We received this response on March 21st:

Okay, so we don’t often actually read purchase policies before making purchases. But… We’re haven’t asked to have a second party pick up our tickets or to switch the credit card. What we have asked is to use an alternative delivery method so that we can receive the product that we have paid for. Jason emailed them back again on March 29th asking for this to be escalated, and we received this response:

So basically, because we used an American account to purchase tickets we only have one option. Sadly because circumstances have change and Jason (as the credit card holder) cannot pick these tickets up, we are being told that Ticketmaster is going to keep our money and we get nothing in return. Note, we have also not had our concern escalated and so are stuck dealing with front line reps with no authority.

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but it seems like changes in delivery would be a fairly common occurrence and that as an international company you should be able to deal with these types of customer service issues. To add insult to injury, every single response we received had the following phrase at the bottom: “Did I provide World Class Service?” Thanks for adding insult to injury folks.

Jason e-mailed back on April 4th, again asking for this to be escalated. We have yet to receive a response.

The end result is that I am instigating a chargeback with my credit card company. I paid money for a product (access to a concert) and ticketmaster is being unreasonable in providing limited delivery methods for that product. As such, I will not be able to see the concert and so will have paid good money for something that they are preventing me from seeing. Here’s to hoping that my credit card company won’t provide equally terrible customer service.

To Flight of the Conchords, I’m pretty bummed that I won’t get to see you in concert. I’ve been a fan since early in the first season (I even purchased two copies of it when it dropped to dvd) and have been avidly watching this season. I was really looking forward to getting to see you live. Sadly, due to ticketmaster I won’t get the chance.