Brown Paper Tickets (BPT), a Seattle-based virtual box office firm, has had two legal complaints filed against it after allegedly failing to refund customers and artists.
Attorneys filed legal actions against the ticket broker in King County Superior Court in August on behalf of ticket buyers with a class-action complaint requesting a jury trial, and on behalf of 16 event producers petitioning the court to appoint a general receiver to seize BPT’s assets.
The customers said tickets they purchased through BPT’s website were not refunded after COVID-19 forced the cancelation and postponement of thousands of events.
Meanwhile, the event producers allege that BPT has not paid them in full for ticket proceeds. They state in the court petition that they are each a “small performing arts group, community cultural group or entertainer” that entered into an agreement for BPT to sell tickets to their events, and that BPT’s “failure to pay the ticket proceeds to them has caused severe financial hardship and continuing potentially irreparable damage.”
According to the Seattle Times, BPT was once one of the region’s most popular ticket brokers for small- to mid-sized theaters and community organisations because of its lower service fees.
In March, BPT founder and president William Jordan said the firm had “lost control” of its cash flow and had to shut down outgoing payments to everyone.
Jordan said: “We lost control over which payments were able to clear and which weren’t. And we managed to p*** off everybody.”
Between March and September, a database with the Washington state Attorney General’s Office tabulated 489 complaints against BPT.
TheTicketingBusiness has contacted BPT for comment.
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