Buying tickets: your rights Refunds for tickets
Expect a refund on your ticket if your event is cancelled or rescheduled
Like most goods and services, you would expect a refund on your tickets if you were unable to use them, for example if the concert, theatre show or sports match you paid to see has been cancelled. But this may not always be the case.
It is a condition of membership of the industry’s self-regulatory body, the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers (STAR), that ticket sellers refund booking fees, as well as the ticket’s face value price, when an event is cancelled.
When you can or can't get a refund on tickets
You're entitled to a full refund of the ticket plus, usually, any additional booking fee or service charges, if the event you have booked for is cancelled, rescheduled or altered – a change of location, for example. If an event is rescheduled to another date, your tickets should be valid. If you can't make the rescheduled date, then you're entitled to a full refund.
The ticket seller is responsible for giving you your refund on tickets to a cancelled event.
But you're not entitled to a refund if an understudy appears in place of a show’s headline star, or a headlining artist changes from the ones advertised on a music festival line-up. And if you can no longer attend an event or you've simply changed your mind about going, you're rarely entitled to a refund, despite tickets often being purchased months in advance.
Ticket sellers that don't refund extra fees
Check the ticket seller's terms and conditions before buying your tickets, as while you'll get the face value of your ticket back you may be out of pocket on the extra fees charged by your ticket seller.
Some ticket sellers or agents refund booking fees but not the postage fee, as they argue that the transaction has taken place. Ticketmaster refunds its postage charges if the tickets have not been delivered when an event is cancelled.
But some ticket agents, including Gigantic, Seetickets and Stargreen, do not refund any of the extra fees they charge, including booking fees, when events are cancelled or rescheduled.
