When a New Hampshire man bought tickets to see a legendary musician at TD Garden last year, he was hoping it would be a night to remember.
Instead, it became an evening he wished he could forget after the show was postponed and he couldn’t get his money back.
Raj Jathar’s mother was visiting from India in December. For her 80th birthday, he took her and his sister to see Andrea Bocelli perform at TD Garden.
But the December 7 show never happened.
Bocelli and his wife appeared on stage to announce a postponement. Video of the moment was posted on his Facebook page.
He told the crowd it was a sad moment for him. “Believe me, I did all my best to sing tonight, but I can’t,” he said.
The Italian tenor could not perform due to health issues.
“We were bummed about it, and we were hoping that, maybe it gets rescheduled to a few days later and we're able to make it after all,” says Jathar. “But unfortunately, it got rescheduled all the way out to the 20th, by which time my mom had already left. So we weren't able to make it.”
When the new show date was posted on Bocelli’s Facebook page, it said for those who were unable to attend the rescheduled December 20th show, “a 14-day refund period” would begin the following week “at point of purchase."
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“I bought the tickets originally from Vivid Seats,” says Jathar. “So I contacted Vivid Seats saying, hey, I just got the news that it's been rescheduled and for the folks who cannot make the new date, they can get a refund.”
But it didn’t go well.
“In talking to them, their response was, well, we are a ticket resale site, we're not in the business of refunding for, if anything was to go wrong other than a cancellation,” says Jathar. “So sorry, you know, you're not going to be able to get a refund from us.”
In an online chat, Vivid Seats suggested that Jathar gift the tickets to friends, or resell them himself, but told him they could not be resold again on the Vivid Seats site.
“It looked like there was no other option but to resell them,” he says. “Then I tried to resell them, except electronically, when you look at the ticket on your phone, it actually, the sell button is grayed out.”
When he couldn’t physically initiate a sale of the tickets, Jathar says Vivid Seats told him to contact the company that originally issued the tickets for help. But he says that company referred him back to Vivid Seats. He says he also contacted the promoter and venue about getting a refund but couldn’t get anywhere.
“So this ping-ponging back and forth took me the better part of a week,” he says. “I was either on the phone with somebody or chatting online with somebody for a good hour or two every day, trying to figure out if there's somebody, anybody who could help me. And when it was clear that nobody was going to step up, that's when…I got in touch with NBC.”
With more than $400 on the line, Jathar contacted NBC 10 Boston Responds two days before the rescheduled show. We reached out to Vivid Seats and a couple of hours later, the company contacted Jathar and issued a full refund of $ 444.36.
“It’s incredible how after a week of banging my head against the wall and run around and nobody being able to help me and everybody just waving their hands and shrugging their shoulders, that within hours I got a call from Vivid Seats saying, guess what? We're going to issue a refund,” he says. “They were very polite and very apologetic and they took care of everything right away.
Vivid Seats tells us the refund happened less than a week after the consumer reached out and before the rescheduled event took place.
“I'm so happy to have this as a recourse,” he says. “You know, I cannot imagine, I'm sure there are other folks who didn't do that and, who probably ended up eating the cost of the tickets, and I feel for them.”
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