The Colorado Department of Law has announced that ticket reseller StubHub will refund Coloradans more than $3m (£2.17m/€2.55m) over cancelled gigs due to COVID-19, with a further $13m going to members of other states.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has said that the department, along with nine other states and the District of Columbia, has forced StubHub through a settlement into backtracking on its original policy during the pandemic.
Joining the settlement were the attorneys general of Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.
The ticket reseller was offering credits equalling 120% of a customer’s purchase, rather than providing a full refund.
StubHub will now have to return $3,120,442 in refunds to 8,688 Colorado residents, with the rest of the refunded $13m going to customers from the other states.
Prior to the pandemic, StubHub offered consumers full refunds for the purchase price and fees if their events were cancelled. However, in March 2020 amid the cancellation of almost every event, StubHub changed this policy to offering credit instead of money.
After multiple states began coordinated investigations, StubHub reversed its decision in May of this year and said that customers who bought tickets before March 25 2020 could have a full monetary refund.
Customers that bought tickets before the pandemic under the original guarantee of a full refund when their events were cancelled will now receive their money back unless they wish to keep the credits.
Weiser said: “The pandemic impacted all Coloradans, many of whom were looking forward to events and experiences that were cancelled as we all worked to keep each other safe and healthy.
“Consumers should not be out of their money when a service they paid for was never provided. My office is committed to protecting consumers, and we will continue to take action to ensure that consumers, like those of StubHub, receive the refunds they are owed.”
The settlement will also require StubHub to ‘clearly and conspicuously disclose any modification to its refund policies before a consumer agrees to it’, ‘honour those policies when events are cancelled’ and ‘promptly process refund requests it receives from consumers for these cancelled events going forward’.
Image: Bill Oxford on Unsplash
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