David Pollina, CEO, managing director, MaltaTicket.com Limited, Mosta
Concert tickets re-sale
Reference is made to the letters by Hazel Smith (August 28) and Raymond Zammit (August 31) regarding refunds for the Joseph Calleja concert, which was postponed.
MaltaTicket.com wishes to reassure Ms Smith that foreigners (or anyone) purchasing tickets online can indeed see the terms of that purchase before their tickets arrive. In fact, clicking on agreement to those terms is a required step in the process. Refunds are only available in the case of cancellation and this is clearly spelled out. In fact, this condition is fairly universal for entertainment tickets anywhere in Europe, not just in Malta.
Despite the non-availability of refunds, when the Calleja concert was so unfortunately postponed, we went out of our way to assist customers who couldn’t make the new date for any reason. There were notices posted on NnG’s Facebook page where sellers who couldn’t attend could find buyers who wished to. While we couldn’t directly help everyone who was unable to attend, we did offer to directly re-sell tickets for any client who sent us proof they would be abroad. We were 100 per cent successful for them as the demand to attend the event was extremely strong.
Mr. Zammit unfortunately decided – for whatever reason – not to e-mail us a proof of travel (e-ticket) but instead sent a text file which could easily have been altered and proved nothing. If he was indeed travelling on the date of the concert, all he had to do was send us the e-ticket and we would have re-sold his tickets for him as we did for many other customers and charged nothing for the service. We treat every case the same and everyone by the same rules and we are glad to help whenever we are able. We regret that Mr Zammit was unwilling to comply with our repeated requests as we would have wished to assist him.
MaltaTicket.com wishes to extend its sincere thanks to the thousands of customers whose patience with the unforeseen postponement of the concert was rewarded with a stellar performance... which the vast majority agree was worth the wait.
3 Comments
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O Darmanin
Sep 3rd 2010, 14:22
The procedure to rechedule an event from date - A to date -B requires that one would first CANCEL the event from date A and the schedule it again (and hence the word reschedule) into Date - B. The fact that the canellation is an inherent step to rescheduling, does not exclude its occurance. Therefore, in my humble opinion, the obligations related to cancellation part of the terms and conditions would still hold.
Two things come to my mind when a company insists that refund is only available to those who are able to produce an undisputable proof that they cannot make it on the new date decided to at the convenience of the organisors
a) I don't beleive that anyone who has committed to an event on Date A should leave his calendar free (or whatever petty event s/he may condsider as important) to accommodate a possible rescheduling of concert!!!
b) it is equivalent to ordering a yellow dress from a shop, and the shop insists to give you a green dress, unless you proof (undisputably) that the green dress is not fit for you!!!
Victor Laiviera
Sep 3rd 2010, 10:39
In Mr Pollina's own words, "the demand to attend the event was extremely strong." and all tickets returned by people who were going abroad were resold without any trouble.
If MaltaTicket had a more customer-friendly mindset, they would have offered an immediate refund to anyone unable to attend on the new date (the number could not have been very large) and immediately resold the tickets.
They would not have suffered even a one cent loss and they would have given their image a huge boost - more than all the adverts they put out at considerable expense. Instead, they chose to project an image of nitpicking scrooges.
Does one have to be an Einstein to see that?
B Sant
Sep 3rd 2010, 12:31
its not true that there was a resellers market on face book!!!!!