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July 23 tickets refund
As we have reported previously, July 23 show in Chicago was cancelled. Fans were given the option of using already purchased tickets for July 22 show at the same venue, or getting a refund at the point of purchase.
We didn’t invent the refund clause or pull it from the thin air. We copied it verbatim from the Ticketmaster website, from the page about July 23 gig, which now is obviously gone.
The Highway Star has received at least one report that Ticketmaster refused to issue a refund for an unused July 23 ticket citing that the show was not cancelled, but rescheduled for July 22. Which is not true as both shows were scheduled at the same time and for a long time tickets were sold for both.
Anyone who has a similar story, please leave a reply. We have no lawyers on staff, or anything like that, but it’s time for the ticket monopoly to get some justice. Let’s start with exposure.
Update (July 28): our reader reports that he’s been able to get a refund from the Ticketmaster after calling them. Ticketmaster also indicated that there is a time limit to request a refund, so don’t procrastinate.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
You saw what Pearl Jam tried to do years ago with Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster won. We are held captive by this corporate monopoly just like the oil companies.
July 28th, 2007 at 00:48Expounding on the ticket controversy…..This is the big problem with the whole record and radio industry. They have been monopolized. Whenever customers have few choices – such as which airline to take to/from a given destination – corporations put the screws to them. The oil companies have American citizens by the gonads, thus the price of fuel goes skyrocketing right before every major holiday. Gas will shoot up at least 30 cents before Labor Day.
Clear Channel Radio, with its 2,000-plus radio stations, has monopolized the radio industry, and a bean-counter at its Louisville headquarters faxes out the same play-list to every one of its rock station affiliates all over the country. Their corporate consultants have decided only to play the most popular songs in a band’s portfolio, because that, supposedly, will bring in higher ratings (money, money). Thus, a person listening to so-called Classic Rock Radio might think Deep Purple only put out three or four good songs in its history.
The radio and record company lapdogs forget that it was a groundswell of public support that propelled Purple and many other groups to the top of the charts back in the day. There’s no way that can happen now. Because, even if a million fans phoned or faxed in requests to hear something off the latest album (Rapture of the Deep), the disc jockeys are compelled by the corporations to play only the songs that are on the bean-counter’s playlist. In that sense, Clear Channel has begun to kill itself – the numbers are dropping, the fans are dying.
And with satellite radio technology soon to make listening to the AM radio band as clear as FM, there is going to be a major programming void to fill across the spectrum of terrestrial- and satellite-bound frequencies. Corporations will start falling all over themselves to buy up the previously scorned-up AM properties in America. But what will they put on those stations? They won’t be able to keep playing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and ‘Smoke on the Water’ ad nauseum – their will be way too many other stations doing the same thing to make it cost-competitive (ratings & shares). Maybe- just maybe – all these suddenly high-tech AM stations, along with the growing number of satellite stations – will be forced to try something DIFFERENT for a change. Maybe the radio corporations, along with the record companies, will play some of the lesser-known songs from a band’s catalogue. Or actually begin playing some songs off their new albums, instead of the same tunes over and over from 1974. Maybe there will be a niche for radio news again.
Radio has been a vast wasteland and a blot upon the American culture for decades. It once was a grand enterprise, a source of pride, information, live plays, breaking news. People were not fragmented all over the dial. They were together culturally because they could hear everything from country to pop to hard rock on the same station. People had something in common to talk about at work the next day. “Hey, did you hear that new song by Deep Purple?!” Same with TV, when there were only three networks. “Hey did you watch That Girl last night? Did you hear Howard Cosell on Monday Night Football”? Now, maybe there are too many choices, too much separation of people.
July 31st, 2007 at 22:15Well said, James.
August 2nd, 2007 at 02:37