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After 8 years, the lawsuit is finally over… Well, almost. On November 29, 2011, Ticketmaster announced the terms of the settlement to their customers. The lawsuit claims that Ticketmaster’s order processing fee and UPS delivery charge are both “excessive and deceptive.”
Basically the terms of the settlement are: if you purchased tickets from Ticketmaster.com between October 21, 1999, and October 19, 2011, you are eligible for a refund of $1.50 per ticket up to 17 tickets. If you had purchased 17 tickets between that time, you would receive $25.50 in credit on Ticketmaster.com. That doesn’t seem like that much, but it does add up to $11.25 million.
Another thing about the settlement is that Ticketmaster does not admit any wrong doing, and they do not have to stop charging the fees. They just have to be upfront and explain them. Ticketmaster got off pretty easy I think. They just got a slap on the wrist to the tune of $11.25 million! That is a lot of money, but they aren’t shelling it out in cash form. It is a credit on their website that has to be used with them to purchase more tickets from them. Another kicker is the credit has to be used within 4 years. I feel like the entire settlement will benefit Ticketmaster. In the end, it will just drive more business their way.
I am a Ticketmaster customer, and I have purchased 17 tickets during that time period. I was totally unaware that this lawsuit was going on. I checked on their website to see if it said anything about it on the home page. No, not one single thing about it. Ticketmaster is being very shady about the entire thing. The shadiness is what got them in this predicament in the first place. I don’t think they have a good PR person to say “Hey, maybe we should try to be more open and honest about what is going on.” It doesn’t even have to be a PR person. Anyone with common sense knows being sneaky always comes back to bite you in the butt one way or the other!
