Music fans who paid too much for their Bruce Springsteen concert tickets take heart: the check will soon be in the mail.
An administrator working for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has mailed claim forms to 1,018 consumers who are eligible for refunds because they allegedly were steered from the Ticketmaster website to its ticket resale website TicketsNow while buying tickets to attend a Springsteen concert last year.
Ticketmaster and its affiliates agreed to pay refunds to some of the concertgoers to settle FTC charges that they used deceptive bait-and-switch tactics to sell event tickets.
The claim forms were mailed earlier this month to some concertgoers who bought tickets for shows in 14 cities: Glendale, Ariz.; San Jose, Calif.; Los Angeles, Calif.; Denver, Colo.; Hartford, Conn.; Atlanta, Ga.; Chicago, Ill.; Boston, Mass.; Saint Paul, Minn.; East Rutherford, N.J.; Long Island, N.Y.; Pittsburgh, Pa..; University Park, Pa..; and Washington, DC.
According to the February 2010 FTC complaint, Ticketmaster steered unknowing consumers to TicketsNow, where tickets were offered at prices that were sometimes double, triple, or quadruple the face value of the ticket. Under the settlement, these concertgoers will get back the difference between what they paid for their tickets and what they would have paid on Ticketmaster.
For example, if a consumer paid $400 for two tickets from TicketsNow, and those same two tickets would have cost $200 from Ticketmaster, the customer will get a $200 refund.
Ticketmaster provided the FTC with a list that included the 1,018 eligible concertgoers who had not received refunds for the extra money they paid to buy the higher-priced tickets from TicketsNow.
All claims must be made by mail and postmarked on or before October 8, 2010. There is no way to submit a claim form online. No date has been set yet for distribution of the checks.
