So I (stupidly) bought a concert ticket through an online third party vendor. I paid way too much, but that's beside the point. I was okay with how much I paid. The way it works is that ticket brokers buy packages of 'pre-sale' tickets from ticketmaster and then piece them off and use this vending website to sell them to
unsuspecting dupes members of the general public who may or may not read all the fine print.
What bothers me is that the concert was moved from one venue to another, and ticketmaster will honor all sales directly from them, but not third party sales. I'm not at all faulting ticketmaster, they did indeed reissue the tickets to the ticket broker. Also, the third party vendor website followed their own policy for canceled shows; they issued a refund. IMO, the proper thing for the broker to do is to honor his/her obligation to the people who bought those tickets from him/her just as ticketmaster did. I purchased my ticket two months in advance. Now, I don't have one. And they jacked the price so high I will no longer consider re-buying it, even if I were not thinking about never using that site again now that I know what they do.
My question: Can I write a complaint letter to the website? They followed their own policies, but IMO those policies are rather unethical as I believe I should have been offered first refusal for the re-issued ticket.
To make the sequence of events clearer, I'll repeat them below in bullet points:
- Two months ago, I buy ticket for more money than it's worth
- Seller using website confirms purchase and I print off e-ticket
- About a week ago, I receive an e-mail telling me the concert is canceled and that the price I paid will be credited to my account (confirmed, it indeed was)
- After searching a bit, I find the concert is not canceled, it has been moved to a bigger venue
- I speak with ticketmaster which confirms that the original buyer (ticket broker) will be reissued the tickets
- I search original website for those tickets, find same tickets now cost almost twice as much
- Tomorrow, tickets at the new venue will go on sale to the general public and getting a new one depends on pure luck and good timing
- I am rather honked off at the policies of the original website and would like to point out to them that this is unfair and probably screwed over a large portion of their customers for this concert, many of whom may not use this site ever again, and of those, many will tell their friends exactly why, and that I am among those customers who will not be coming back and who will be spreading the word
Is it within the bonds of etiquette to complain to a company for following its own policy if that policy is unfair?
