Cancelled events: are you still waiting on a refund?

A string of lockdowns over the past year means you probably haven’t managed to physically attend any events in recent months.

Not being able to attend a festival, concert or sport event you’ve been looking forward to is frustrating enough as it is – but not being offered a refund adds salt to the wound.

We’re looking into events, ticketing platforms and insurance to see whether companies have been treating customers unfairly.

How are sports clubs handling pandemic-hit season tickets?

If you’re still waiting on a refund – or faced an uphill battle trying to get one – for events cancelled or postponed due to coronavirus, let us know in the comments below.

Cancelled and postponed events

We’ve heard from customers who were only given a short window to request a refund for events cancelled last year due to lockdown restrictions.

And we’ve also been contacted by ticket-holders who agreed to roll over their tickets to a postponed date, only for the rescheduled date to move again in light of another round of restrictions.

In these cases, a lot of event companies have refused refunds if customers can’t attend the new rescheduled date.

If something similar has happened to you, let us know.

Refunds short of booking fees

Or perhaps you did receive a refund but it was a smaller amount than you’d anticipated?

Primary ticket retailers such as See Tickets and Ticketmaster are obligated to refund you if your event is cancelled, but they only have to reimburse you the face value of your tickets.

This means, controversially, they can keep delivery costs and booking fees even if the event didn’t go ahead.

Do you feel you weren’t refunded the right amount? What kind of fees were kept by the event or ticketing company?

Virtual event gone wrong?

Glastonbury’s live stream was hit by technical difficulties last weekend – an ‘invalid code’ error message appeared when ticketholders tried to enter the virtual event.

The organisers apologised and have offered refunds to affected customers who paid £20 for a ticket.

This is not acceptable…….one and a half hours trying to join and I, like many others, am still met with the same error message of "invalid code". I wanted to support Glastonbury but I would now like to demand a full refund of my £20 fee that I was charged

— Andrew (@Flounderis) May 22, 2021

Did you buy tickets to a livestream event that had tech issues? Were you issued a refund?

Ticket insurance

We’re also interested to hear about ticket insurance and whether it’s helped you secure money back for events cancelled or postponed in lockdown.

Let us know what insurance you bought and whether it covered you for COVID-related cancellations.