It takes only 2 minutes from payment to application for refund, but 50% of the handling fee is charged; Because his family wanted to refund the ticket after his death, he found that he had to talk repeatedly between the platform and the sponsor, and he had to keep up with the progress of complaints, as if he had experienced a protracted "battle of refund"; The refund rules for the same concert project are different in different cities... According to the Legal Daily, recently, consumers have many complaints about the refund system of performance tickets. The complicated ticket refund process, unclear rules, high fees and other issues have made many consumers directly worried.
The difficulty in returning performance tickets is not an individual case. According to the statistics of the Black Cat Big Data Center, there are more than 27000 complaints related to concerts on the Black Cat Complaint Platform, including more than 90% complaints related to ticket return and change. The 2023 China Performance Consumer Insight Report also shows that about 40% of consumers have difficulty in purchasing tickets and cannot return or transfer tickets. On the basis of taking into account the interests of all parties, how to effectively reduce the risk of consumers' ticket purchase and let people mention that when refunding tickets, it is no longer "top priority" and "heart congestion". It really needs to improve the corresponding systems and rules.
There are some realistic considerations behind the setting of certain conditions when returning performance tickets. First of all, this kind of ticket is characterized by its obvious scarcity and timeliness. Some insiders said that once the concert is over, the ticket is "waste paper". In addition, the concert is usually held through cooperation between multiple companies and the platform, which is difficult to coordinate, and the corresponding preparation and operation costs are also high. In addition, the consideration of preventing malicious competition and scalpers from speculating on tickets together led to the phenomenon of "ticket refund difficulty".
Consumers are not unable to understand these concerns of the sponsor and the platform, and are willing to bear the corresponding risks and losses. What people really dislike is that they refuse to refund completely regardless of the situation, or set "overbearing" regulations on high handling fees.
The purchase of tickets is essentially a contract between the buyer and the seller. Based on different reasons for terminating the contract, the treatment methods should also be different. As analyzed by a lawyer, if a consumer is unable to perform due to force majeure factors such as the death of a family member, whether emotionally or legally, there is a reason to terminate the contract and no liability for breach of contract. When refunding tickets, there should be a clearer distinction between force majeure factors, situations where both parties need to bear risks and consumers bear the main responsibility.
At present, some performance ticket refund and change rules are not detailed enough, which also makes consumers feel unfair and reasonable. For example, whether a ticket refund application was raised three weeks before the official start of the performance or three days ago, the risks to the second ticket sales are obviously different. How can the same ticket refund charging standard be applied across the board?
Considering that at present many concert tickets are sold 2-3 months in advance, people may change their plans during this period, and it is inevitable that they will not be able to go. If you apply for refund in advance, it is obviously unreasonable to be "cut" by a large margin. In this regard, only by referring to the existing norms of train tickets and air tickets and setting up reasonable standards for the receipt of echelon refunds for performance activities can the right of ticket buyers to refund tickets be better guaranteed. In this way, there will be no strange situation of "50% service charge will be charged after 2 minutes of payment and ticket refund".
In addition, some performers' claims about difficulties in multi-party coordination and risks in secondary sales are not unsolvable. There are multiple preparation and operation entities for a performance, so as to better present the effect and provide consumers with more intimate services, rather than become an excuse for shifting blame, which makes consumers bother to "pull the trigger" back and forth. Clarify the multi-party coordination mechanism and the relationship between rights and responsibilities, so that consumers can "one click" when they need to worry about refunding tickets and avoid distractions. This is the homework that the performance organizers should do well, and can't be shirked at will.
As for the risk of secondary sales, consumers should not pay too much for it. In fact, by improving the ticket sales mechanism, the uncertainty of secondary ticket sales can be greatly reduced. Some experts suggested that a standby ticket purchase system could be set up in the system. As long as someone refunds the ticket, the standby personnel can obtain the ticket in turn, thus reducing the losses of the ticket holders. Accordingly, the refund fees can also be reduced. In this way, it not only reduces the risk of "failure" of ticket sales, reduces the losses of ticket refunders, but also makes it possible for the audience who are "hard to grab tickets" to get what they want. Isn't it a win-win situation?
Today, the cultural performance consumption market continues to be hot. People's enthusiasm for watching performances should not be dampened by the difficulties of refunding tickets, which are so popular again and again. Only by introducing a more perfect and reasonable return and change mechanism in the industry, and effectively solving the contradiction between consumers' purchase of tickets in advance and uncertainty in watching the performance, can consumers be assured to buy, which is conducive to the long-term development of the industry.
