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Ticketmaster Customers, Get Ready For Your (Tiny) Class-Action Payout
An anonymous reader writes "If you used Ticketmaster's website to buy tickets between October 21, 1999 and October 19, 2011, you're in for a windfall. Well, a $1.50 per ticket order windfall. Because of a proposed class action settlement, Ticketmaster is being forced to credit $1.50 per ticket order (up to 17 orders) to customers because they profited from 'processing fees' without declaring as much. And despite the reparations, Ticketmaster can continue to profit off transactions — they just have to say they're doing so on their website."
..that the attorneys are going to get substantially more than $1.50 ($16,500,000 shared between them)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Ah, I found the answer, and it's "You must also have been a resident of the United States at the time of your purchase". And the $1.50 is only credit on their site! You don't even get a cheque for the money. Ridiculous. I hope the lawyers who agreed to this also get their payment in ticketmaster credit only.
It probably doesn't serve your sense of victimhood as well; but if you take a look at the complaint you'll notice that something rather different is the case:
Specifically, TicketMaster (falsely) declared that a given charge covered the cost of a specific processing option, when in fact it was simply added to improve the margin on the transaction. Making false claims about goods or services involved in a transaction is, y'know, "fraud"(which, incidentally, is in large part why our financial system is in ruins)... Had they simply not engaged in fraud, and not misrepresented the nature of the fee, they would have been free and clear...
I just checked a recent ticket and it does indeed declare that charge correctly now. The 4 items mentioned are:
1. Cost of performance
2. Cost of venue
3. <illegible smudge>
4. Profit!
actually, it is a scam imho because you do not get 1.50 in cash but you get it as a discount voucher for the next ticket you buy. Ticketmaster doesn't pay you a single cent in CASH and if you stopped using them you're SOL, you're not going to get anything back. Their lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank.
Think of this settlement as just a small mandatory promotion for them since you'll be paying them anyway MUCH more than that for a ticket. The $1.50 discount is insignifiant.
http://consumerist.com/2011/11/you-could-score-150-as-part-of-class-action-suit-against-ticketmaster.html
root@127.0.0.1
Well the problem with this "$1.50 refund" is that it's actually $1.50 off your next purchase with ticketmaster".
Read them email to the end. I got this email a few days ago, and as far as I can tell this is legalized highway robbery. For the low, low price of $16.5 million to the lawyers who took up the cause, Ticketmaster gets free publicity and additional repeat customers, while not having to pay their customers anything. There is so absolutely little for the average customer to have gained from this, there might have not even been a lawsuit to begin with.
These sorts of cases where the lawyers representing the public are well compensated need to require that a cash payment be put in to a fund to be claimed against. Reading that email from Ticketmaster was a waste of my time.
moox. for a new generation.
This is a complete scam along with most class action lawsuits as the only ones who profit from this are the bloodsucking lawyers!!! Want proof? Ticketmaster is required to pay out $11.25 million in customer refunds, although this could increase based on how many people bother to dig up their tickets from 10 years ago. The two plaintiffs who started this each get 20k. And what do the lawyers get? $16.5 million. Biggest scam on the planet.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
If the payout to consumers is in the form of a voucher, it would only be fair that the the lawyer's fee is paid out in the form of a Ticketmaster voucher also.