Robert Smith of The Cure performs in Glastonbury, England, in 2019. This week, he shared his frustrations with Ticketmaster, and introduced Thursday that the corporate would lower fees and provide partial refunds to The Cure’s ticket purchasers.
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Robert Smith of The Cure performs in Glastonbury, England, in 2019. This week, he shared his frustrations with Ticketmaster, and introduced Thursday that the corporate would lower fees and provide partial refunds to The Cure’s ticket purchasers.
Ian Gavan/Getty Images
One remedy — or a remedy, not less than — for prime Ticketmaster fees seems to be The Cure frontman Robert Smith, who stated he was “sickened” by the fees and announced Thursday that Ticketmaster will provide partial refunds and lower fees shifting ahead.
“After further conversation, Ticketmaster have agreed with us that many of the fees being charged are unduly high,” Smith tweeted. Smith stated the corporate agreed to provide a $5-10 refund per ticket for verified fan accounts “as a gesture of goodwill.”
1 OF 2: AFTER FURTHER CONVERSATION, TICKETMASTER HAVE AGREED WITH US THAT MANY OF THE FEES BEING CHARGED ARE UNDULY HIGH, AND AS A GESTURE OF GOODWILL HAVE OFFERED A $10 PER TICKET REFUND TO ALL VERIFIED FAN ACCOUNTS FOR LOWEST TICKET PRICE (‘LTP’) TRANSACTIONS…
— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) March 16, 2023
Fans who already purchased tickets will get their refunds robotically, Smith stated, and all future ticket purchases will incur lower fees.
The announcement got here a day after Smith shared his frustration on Twitter, saying he was “as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘fees’ debacle. To be very clear: the artist has no way to limit them.”
In some instances, followers say the fees greater than doubled their ticket worth, with one social media user sharing that they paid over $90 in fees for a $80 ticket.
Ticketmaster has been in a harsh highlight in current months. Last November, Taylor Swift fans waited hours, paid excessive fees and weathered outages on the Ticketmaster web site to strive to rating tickets to her Eras Tour. A day earlier than the tickets have been set to open to most of the people, the corporate canceled the sale due to “extraordinarily high demands on ticketing systems and insufficient remaining ticket inventory to meet that demand.”
In an announcement on Instagram, Swift stated it was “excruciating for me to watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”
In January, following that debacle, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing looking at Live Nation — the corporate that owns Ticketmaster — and the shortage of competitors within the ticketing business. Meanwhile, attorneys normal throughout many states initiated client safety investigations, Swift’s followers sued the corporate for fraud and antitrust violations and a few lawmakers known as for Ticketmaster to be damaged up.
Ticketmaster didn’t instantly reply to NPR’s request for remark.