A California woman who ordered two tickets to a Jersey Boys performance from an online broker late last year not only never received her tickets but has yet to receive a refund. But her persistence is a lesson in how fans should handle customer service lapses, as she told TicketNews this week.
Tracy Taylor of Ventura ordered two tickets to the popular show in November, 2007, from Chicago, IL-based ticket broker TicketSpecialists.com, paying a total of $544 for them. The purchase was a Christmas gift for her parents, and the costs broke down as $230 a piece for the tickets, $69 in obtaining fees and $15 in two-day delivery charges. The show was scheduled for August 5, 2008, at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, and the seats were located in the Mezzanine in Row L.
When the tickets didn’t arrive within a few weeks, Taylor said she wasn’t too worried because she had ordered them months in advance. After the New Year, she began to periodically call NorthsideTickets.com, the Houston, TX-based broker that her receipt said filled the order on behalf of TicketSpecialists.com. “When I got someone on the phone, they’d tell me the tickets would be mailed out any day, but that never happened.”
The matter became one that is rare but still happens within the secondary ticket industry: the dropped order that mistakenly falls through the cracks.
After several calls, Taylor tried them again on July 31 and was told that the show had been canceled, but that she should receive a full refund in approximately three days on her VISA card.
“Frankly, I was relieved at that point because I was worried that there wasn’t going to be enough time for the tickets to get to me and for me to get them to my parents,” she said. But as of today, August 19, Taylor said her card has yet to be credited.
So, instead of giving up, Taylor began contacting the Better Business Bureau, consumer protection Web sites and TicketNews for some relief, and it appears to have paid off.
TicketNews tried to contact Tom Wheeler, president of NorthsideTickets.com, and David Jacobs, president of TicketSpecialists.com and its parent company OnlineSeats.com, but neither could not be reached for comment. But as two of the more reputable brokerages in the industry, once the case was brought to their attention the two vowed to address Taylor’s situation, according to people who are close to the matter.
“It was just dumb luck that I found them to order the tickets,” Taylor said. “But, believe me, I never want to go through that again.”
