Ticketmaster has reimbursed 18 million pesos to the 2,155 customers who were left out of Bad Bunny's concert on December 9, 2022 at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.
The Federal Consumer Attorney's Office (Profeco) has issued a statement in which it ensures that they have worked with the company to verify that all those affected received the full price they paid for their ticket, plus the 20% that the law dictates for the damage caused .
As Ticketmaster has complied with its clients in this case, Profeco will not fine the company, although the users of this and many other concerts have been complaining for some time about its abusive practices: charging excessive commissions, impossibility to buy tickets online and no attention. when there are problems in the sale of tickets in less media concerts.
That December night, the Puerto Rican artist climbed a floating palm tree that traveled along an almost empty dance floor.
Outside, thousands of people were crying in frustration because they had not seen his favorite singer at one of his last concerts.
Ticketmaster's scanning machines failed to detect the existence of tickets and workers, with no other way to check their validity, were forced to lock out users who had purchased their tickets legally.
Ticketmaster gave its version, now endorsed by Profeco, of the cause that had been behind the failures: the high concentration of mobile devices had degraded the internet signal with which the scanning systems operate.
During the second concert, the following day, the influx of people outside the venue, who had gone to celebrate the day before, although they did not have a ticket, was reduced, and access flowed without problems, according to the special operation of the Profeco deployed that night.
However, the institution does not report on the rest of the complaints and concerts that the company has received in recent months.
Many Ticketmaster users who had problems with their tickets are still not receiving their money, and the company's own social networks have been filled with comments about people who have not yet received any attention.
A young woman could not enter the concert explains her situation in a call during the Bad Bunny concert on December 9. Emilio Espejel
More and more major artists are rebelling against the abusive commissions that the company imposes on its clients.
The most relevant accusations have come from the United States, where the Senate accused the company of monopoly and forced it to testify before the Chamber as a result of the problems in the sale of tickets for Taylor Swift, whose exorbitant prices and failures on the website they pissed off their fans and caused the concert to be cancelled.
Clyde Lawrence, singer of the mid-sized band Lawrence, spoke towards the end of the audience and explained the business that LiveNation and Ticketmaster have been running since they merged: “In this case, the promoter and the venue are part of the same corporate entity, so essentially it's Live Nation negotiating to pay itself.
The last conflict for which the company has been beaten has been with the group The Cure.
Its singer, Robert Smith, was outraged on social media when he learned that his tickets were being sold under the dynamic pricing model, which causes the price to rise when the system detects strong demand.
The artist does not receive that increase in price.
Ticketmaster accepted that the charges they were charging were excessive and set out to reimburse their customers for the excess price paid by fans.
The company justified itself by saying that this way of setting prices was due to the attempt to stop resale, another of the platform's big problems.
(WE DIDN'T AGREE TO THE 'DYNAMIC PRICING' / 'PRICE SURGING' / 'PLATINUM TICKET' THING... BECAUSE IT IS ITSELF A BIT OF A SCAM? A SEPARATE CONVERSATION!)
— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 15, 2023
Guitarist Neil Young has joined Robert Smith's lawsuit against Ticketmaster.
“It's over,” he wrote in a statement posted on his website, “the old days are gone.
Artists now have to worry about fans getting scammed due to Ticketmaster plugins and resellers.
Concert tours aren't fun anymore."
In Mexico, the monopoly of the company goes long.
In addition to the process that Profeco had opened after the Bad Bunny concert, this agency is not known to have opened any other process against Ticketmaster for the rest of the irregularities reported by its clients.
Meanwhile, thousands of young people spend entire salaries on concerts for which they have been saving for months and wait in line hoping that their tickets have not been cloned or fake,
People in front of a guard at the entrances during the Bad Bunny concert on December 9, 2022.Emilio Espejel
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