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When Valeria Villacorta's BTS concert is canceled, Ticketmaster promises her a prompt refund. More than three years later, she's still waiting. Is there any way she can get her $654 back?
Q: I had tickets to see BTS, but the show was canceled during the pandemic. Since then, I have been going back and forth with Ticketmaster and Bank of America trying to receive my refund.
Here's the problem: I had to cancel the debit card that I used to pay for the tickets because I had lost it. Ticketmaster said there should be no issue with receiving my refund since it was still the same account number.
In 2021, when I should have received the refund, I waited one month before I filed a dispute with Bank of America. The bank denied it since it fell outside the 60-day timeframe for filing chargebacks.
I have been in contact with both Ticketmaster and Bank of America for many months, but nothing has been resolved. The only thing Ticketmaster has given as proof that they sent the refund was a reference number. Anytime I have given this number to Bank of America they tell me that doesn't mean anything.
I have tried so many times for years and nothing has been resolved. I am hoping you can help me get my money back. -- Valeria Villacorta, Glen Burnie, Md.
A: I'm sorry you missed the BTS concert -- I heard they put on a great show. But during the pandemic, they didn't get permission to dance, so it made sense to cancel their shows.
You're right: the problem was your debit card. Ticketmaster's policy is to refund your ticket to the original form of payment, and when you changed your card, it was no longer the original form of payment. So the refund got stuck.
But you also made another error when you filed a dispute with your bank, and it wasn't an issue with the 60-day rule. Unfortunately, your bank misinformed you about your debit card. The Fair Credit Billing Act, the law that allows you to dispute a charge, only applies to credit cards. I have details on the rules and regulations in my complete guide to a credit card dispute.
If you had purchased your ticket with a credit card, would that have changed the equation? Maybe, maybe not. If, as your bank said, you were outside the 90-day window, your bank may have still accepted your dispute. But wires could have still gotten crossed with Ticketmaster, and there is no guarantee that would have worked. You're better off going directly to Ticketmaster and making arrangements to have it send you the money. Ticketmaster can bend its own rule about crediting the original form of payment, so it could have bypassed your bank entirely. I list the names, numbers and email addresses of the Ticketmaster executives on my consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org. (And by the way, this isn't the first Ticketmaster case involving BTS. I wonder how many more readers are out there, thinking, "Save me!")
I contacted Ticketmaster on your behalf. It reviewed your refund case, which should have been resolved more than three years ago, and it quickly refunded you $654, the full price of your BTS tickets. As BTS might say, that's dynamite.
Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy (https://elliottadvocacy.org), a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve their problems. Email him at chris@elliott.org or get help by contacting him at https://elliottadvocacy.org/help/
