 What's up, guys? Welcome back. It's been a minute. Let's talk Ticketmaster, shall we? My name is Shiraz. Here on Thumbs Up Run, where we talk about buying tickets, selling tickets, and making sure that you have all the fun with your tickets. Today, I want to talk all about Ticketmaster, what they've been doing with their Ticketmaster refund policy, all the changes that have been made, running through a little timeline of what's been happening over the last month or so, and what to expect going forward if you're trying to get some money back on some events that have been canceled or postponed. Well, let's dive into it. All right, first off, very simply, let's start with the basics. What is or rather, what was Ticketmaster's refund policy? Basically, it was very, very simple and straightforward. Actually, it was any time there was an event that was canceled or postponed or rescheduled, you'd be able to request a refund. There were minimal exceptions, the US Open and MLB tickets. Other than that, it was pretty much fair game to be able to go ahead and make a request for a refund, get your money back within 70 to 10 business days. All was well. Nobody questioned it too much because it just kind of worked out. There was never, you know, a whole wave of thousands and thousands and thousands of events being canceled at once. Then we came into, you know, mid-March, things started going on in the world. And then Ticketmaster late March, early April made their first move, their first change to the refund policy. They quietly just changed it to say that they'd only be offering refunds for canceled events. Now, this posed a large, large problem because a lot of events weren't being canceled. They were simply being postponed, suspended on hold. No one really had a specific time and date of when these new events were going to take place. They just said, Oh, we'll do it later. We'll do it later. Don't worry. Just hold on to your tickets. It'll be fine. We'll get back to you. Well, let me tell you, by the time we approached April 10th, pandemonium ensued, everybody started realizing what was going on with Ticketmaster's refund policy, all the changes that had been made, people were not able to get their money back. It was becoming a big problem. Twitter did what Twitter does, took out their pitchporks, all joined in together, banned it as one, playing, complaining, complaining. And they got themselves some changes. April 14th rolls around, Ticketmaster issues a new statement saying, Hey, we're doing all we can making sure that we can go ahead and get you your money back for refunds that you're requesting. But unfortunately, it all is tied to the event organizers and promoters. They're the ones to make the decision on whether we can issue a refund or not. Unfortunately, we're just the middleman who, you know, happened to be the face of all this backlash. And Twitter is like, uh, no, we don't work this way. We're not a forgiving people. We're an angry mob. We, we pitchforks. So they came back and full force angered once again. Then we move on to April 17th. The magical day went all was well. Ticketmaster issued a new letter, posted it up to the world. They saying, Hey, we're going to create this new program. It's called rock. When you're ready, we're going to be offering people all sorts of credits and refunds as soon as we can. Yeah. So what did it say? They said for canceled events, still follow the same protocol. Anytime it was canceled, you'd go ahead and get your money back as a refund. No questions asked. But then they added another layer on top of they said automatically you'll go ahead and get your money back for your canceled event. Fine and dandy. Great. Or you can go ahead and get up to 150% concert cash credit back on your account. Basically saying, Hey, if you don't get the cash back and we don't let us keep holding the cash, we'll give you a bonus 150% of the price you paid for those tickets. Doesn't say if it includes fees or not. Doesn't go into all the specifics quite yet. But basically they're saying, Hey, we'll give you some additional bonus money that you can go ahead and use on Ticketmaster. Once events start taking place again, go ahead and use them to buy tickets and whatever else they say that it's eligible for. Basically saying, Hey, we're giving you some free money. If you're interested in not having that cash back just right now, we'll go ahead and give you something that you can use in the future. Great. Then we jump over to where everyone was actually quite angry on postponed events. So what did they do? They released some new information on postponed events and they basically said anything that was postponed that has a new rescheduled date, you can go ahead and request a refund. With this program, they're saying all events that have been postponed with rescheduled dates, you want to request a refund. Any canceled events that haven't been paid out yet, they'll be paid out within the May 1st to May 30th window. You basically make your decision on wanting to do the refund or the credit depending on what you pick. That's how they're going to process your transactions. Now, let me reiterate. Anytime there was a postponed event that had a new rescheduled date, this is key because still a lot of events have been postponed with no new dates set in stone. What does that mean? It means a lot of events still would not qualify for this program. So Ticketmaster is saying, hey, anything that was postponed, you can go ahead and get your money back or you can go ahead and get a credit for it. But it's still a problem, right? So a lot of postponed events that do not have any future dates set. So that would still make a lot of events not eligible for this program. So what happened? Twitter got on whole board again, more and more angry. And people, you know, they, they, they won, I guess. So then April 24th, Friday, 5.30pm news flash comes out from Ticketmaster. Hey, we're updating our program. So one, the no longer calling it the rock when you're ready program, they call it the ticket refund plan or ticket relief plan. Basically saying, you know, it's a bit more, you know, a bit nicer within this plan. They have now added the additional statement saying any postponed events that do not have a rescheduled date set within 60 days of when it was postponed, these will also now qualify for a refund. All right. So now we're talking again, still quite some time in the future. But again, they are now saying, okay, we're going to go ahead, be able to offer you a refund or give you the credit. All great things. But again, they're doing it in such a way that it allows them to manage their cash flow refunds will take 30 days to process. So don't expect to see your money anytime soon. No, first wave opens up May 1st to May 30th. All the things that have already happened in the past, that'll be the window to make your selections on whether you get the credit or the refunds. If you don't do anything, you'll just get your tickets good to go. Nothing special, nothing, nothing going on. And last thing they added in was basically, if you want to donate your tickets to someone who is, you know, first responders, you can go ahead, do that as well through their, they have another program there. All, you know, we'll be there, fine and dandy. But the big thing, of course, is being able to get your money back. Ticketmaster went through this whole process of saying, no, we're not going to offer any refunds to offer some refunds or offer some future refunds and credits. They're working along it. But basically the way they've designed this program, the whole thing is basically one, dealing it as, you know, as the issue comes up. And then two, trying to design a way that it allows them to manage their cash flow. Now it's not a perfect system, obviously. From a consumer's point of view, yes, you can go ahead, get your money back. It'll just now take a little bit of time before it's all possible. But you can go ahead and now start making those requests. There may be still some exceptions though. So make sure you take a look once that May 1st window opens up, you can go ahead, start playing around with it, seeing what your options are. I believe, I'm not sure, we'll find out once we get closer to the actual date and once it opens up. I believe what's going to happen is they're going to take that entire window, let people make their decisions, and then it'll be 30 days from that point, end of May 30th. So I think June 30th, when we're starting seeing refunds getting issued. I don't believe it's going to be on the day you make that selection. Because again, I think from their point of view, it's they're trying to just batch it as much as possible, could be wrong. So we'll take a look and see once May 1st rolls around and those first refunds start hitting those credit cards. Now, of course, with all of this, there are quite a few exceptions. So I put a link in the description below, which goes into the details of what the actual plan is as posted on Live Nation and Ticketmaster. So you can go ahead there, check out some of the FAQs. You know, there are some exceptions on when tickets do and don't apply for this program. So again, just kind of read the fine print there. One of the big ones though is what happens if you purchase tickets to an event that was already postponed, you generally will not qualify for this program. So again, make sure you go ahead read the terms conditions. If you have any specific questions on it though, let me know in the comments below. Be sure to get back to all of you. I want to make sure that you guys can get all the money you are owed. So again, if you have questions, let me know in the comments below. Now, last thing I want to stress here is that there's a big difference between cancelled events and postponed events. Cancelled events are yes, they're no longer going to happen whatsoever. So obviously, you should be able to get your money back. Postponed events, on the other hand, they are something that is a bit more tricky. We don't know if it's going to get cancelled. It could be rescheduled. It might not. Unfortunately, this is where we get into this problem where we can't get all our money back right away. So again, postponed events, you are not necessarily owed your money instantly. It's going to take some time. So make sure once May 1st opens up, go ahead into your Ticketmaster account and then you can start making those requests. Some of you might actually find getting the credit may be worth it. So if that is the case, obviously go ahead, select that option, use that money in the future sometime a year or two years down the road whenever they start selling more tickets. Go ahead, use it towards that, making those purchases, saving some money, getting basically free event tickets. Not a bad deal. It's just your cash is tied up. So if that option is something that you would like, go ahead, select that one. If you want to get that cash back, go ahead, take the refund. Nothing wrong with either option. Basically, long story short, Ticketmaster ran into a whole bunch of issues. People were complaining. They had to basically figure out a way to make sure people can get their money back because they were basically just changing their terms and conditions as they decided to. So that's all we got for today. Definitely a lot more videos coming up in the future because there's been a lot of things that have been happening this last month, which I have not been covering. So if you see anything you want me to talk about, let me know in the comments below. Otherwise, I have a list of things that we need to cover, lots and lots of fun content coming up. So make sure you stay tuned, subscribe if you haven't already. See you guys next time.