Returning tickets for canceled shows via the German Eventim. Any experience?

Does anybody have any experience with returning tickets for canceled shows via the German Eventim these days?

I have tickets for a concert that was supposed to take place in July in Germany. It has been canceled. Two weeks ago I recieved an e-mail from eventim, that I should fill the return form on their web.

I successfuly filled the form, it confirmed the numbers of the barcodes of my tickets, but when I pushed the "Request reverse transaction" button, I only got and error message "Your enquiry could not be executed. Please try again later."

I have tried it maybe 50 times during the last two weeks, always with the same result.

I wrote to eventim, they replied after 3 days and I was asked to send them the barcodes. I did immediately. Now, after another 5 days I got another e-mail, saying "As soon as all terms for the return have been clarified, we will inform you immediately. Until then, please refrain from sending your tickets back to us."

At the same time for this particular event eventim clearly says at their web: "The promoter has authorised us as the ticketing intermediary, to handle the ticket return process. In order to issue a refund to you, we require your tickets and contact information. Please go to and complete the ticket return form."

So the return form doesn't work and after I was instructed to send the barcodes via e-mail and I did, I was then instructed not to send those and wait for clarification, while the instructions are absolutely clear.

So - does anybody have any recent experience with eventim? Is it realistic to expect that I will get my money back or shall I get used to the fact that I won't? Thanks



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-26 22:13 by bv.

It's a bit difficult to return Tickets in Germany since the Government prefers a Voucher solution instead of a Refund. The Voucher solution is official since 15-May-2020 - [www.Eventim.de] - (COVID-19 pandemic).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-19 14:00 by Irix.

Doesn't Germany have a customers' rights legislation of some sorts? Legally you should have the right to get your money back. Doesn't sound like they (Eventim) are making it too easy for you to do that, though...

Did you pay by credit card? One option would be to raise the issue with your credit card company.

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Topi

Doesn't Germany have a customers' rights legislation of some sorts? Legally you should have the right to get your money back.

Yes, but instead of getting Money back there should be (by law) a Voucher first.


From the FAQ by [www.Verbraucherzentrale.de] - (German consumer protection organization):

"Q: Are there any exceptions to the obligation to accept a voucher?

A: Yes, you can demand payment of the voucher value from the operator or organiser if the voucher solution is unreasonable for you in view of your personal circumstances. This is conceivable, for example, if you could prove that without payment of the voucher value you are currently unable to pay existentially important living costs such as rent or energy bills."


See also the official information by the German Federal Government - [www.Bundesregierung.de] .

Wow, that's pretty wild. So the legislator basically retroactively changed the terms and conditions. Just guessing, but I'd bet the Eventim T&C's allowed for cash refunds for cancelled events at the time when the tickets were actually purchased.

And I understand this supersedes general customers' rights legislation too?

But hey, it's the Bundestag, they can move the goalposts in the middle of a match.

Well, I have heard about the vouchers and it is obviously a rip off, especially for someone who bought the tickets from abroad. But I am not surprized. In our country our government issued pretty much the same law but about travel agencies. So if your holiday gets cancelled, instead of money back, you get a voucher. One has to wonder, whar are contracts for. You, as a custommer, have to stick to the contract, the travel agencies don't. That is the law now.

Anyway. It looks like the chances that I would get my money back from eventim are very low. Unbelievable.

It is very strange, since as I wrote, the official eventim instructions at the web page with the information about this particular concert says: "The promoter has authorised us as the ticketing intermediary, to handle the ticket return process. In order to issue a refund to you, we require your tickets and contact information. Please go to and complete the ticket return form."

Since I paid with card, the only chance is to try to contact the card provider, as Topi suggested. I have never done that and I suspect that it migh be a problem in this case, if they have this kind of law now. Again - unbelievable.

If you paid by credit card (check)and did not get what you paid for (check), it's definitely worth a try. Most major credit cards have some kind of buyer protection.

Try to open up a dispute with your credit card company and see what happens.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-19 22:35 by Topi.

I know that a major European airline recently struck a deal with American Express not to issue any chargebacks.Yes unfortunately it is correct that as consumers we must obey the rules or be punished but more frequently these big corporations get away with changing the rules to suit themselves.
I had a ticket for Guns N Roses in London next week and all I’ve had is an email from ticketmaster to say my ticket is valid for a potential new date and not to bother them by contacting them.
I personally hope that the people who make these decisions return home one evening to find their wife blowing someone else.

Nate

well, it's unfair in many ways. On the other hand if everybody wanted their money back immediately the result was a kind of bankrush. Eventim and other promoters were to collapse immediately and nobody would get their money back (or just a rather small part of it). The policy they run now doesn't make sense for individual ticket holders/buyers right now but enhances the chance that everybody will be able their money back or be able to go to the shows they have tickets for (someday). At least the ticket promoters are winning time. Still the deal would be much fairer if they were to paid an interest rate to the ticket holders to compansate for their forced loan (that's what it is, after all) or offer a 10% discount on their next purchase…



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-20 00:18 by slewan.

The instructions at the eventim web concerning this concert changed slightly yesterday and are even clearer now:

The promoter decided that you will receive a refund. For this, we require your tickets and contact information. Please go to and complete the ticket return form.

The return form still doesn't work and the message I get after filling it has also changed:

The ticket barcode(s) you entered can currently not be processed via this ticket refund transaction form. Please contact our customer service team.

So I wrote them again (third time). I wonder if I get that answer that they have to wait for clarification of the return process again.

I thought about that possibility of contacting the credit card provider. I can see that there might be a problem, since eventim is a ticket seller, not the producer. I paid for tickets, I got tickets. So from eventim's point of view I probably got what I paid for...

Anyway, I still hope it will end well. Well, I also paid 35 Euro for postage (really! and Germany is just accross the border) that I will never get back, plus hotel... but well...as I wrote before, we are facing a very real possibilty of getting a voucher instead of our money that we paid for a family holiday in Greece, so... absurd times...

My experience with EventIM is that they are lacking on the customer service level. Good luck fighting the battle.

Happy24, yes, you got tickets, but you didn't get what those tickets were good for : the show on that scheduled date. Worse yet, the show is cancelled entirely, not even postponed.

So the way I see it is you did not get what you paid for. It doesn't matter whether Eventim is just the middle man/a ticket-selling platform. You as a consumer dealt with them, a service provider.

I'd still try calling the credit card company and see what they say.

By the way, it's weird that they would need the actual physical tickets back. In 2020, you would think that all they need to verify is the order number. What the hell are they going to do with the actual (paper/pdf?) tickets?

my experience with Eventim Germany is you need to contact your creditcard company. Its not so easy to get money back from Eventim itself... But your credit card company will send you the money back quickly )

Life's just a cocktail party on the street

EU law beats German law. EU right says: refund, no vouchers!

Not sure what the EU legislation applicable to concert tickets is though. There is an European Union Consumer Rights' Directive but it's not directly applicable, the member states have had to transpone it into their respective national legislations.

Wonder if this helps?

[ec.europa.eu]

Quote

I bought tickets for an event that has been cancelled. Am I entitled to a refund?

EU consumer law does not regulate the conditions for and consequences of cancellation of sports and cultural events.
Therefore, your rights in case of cancellation (or postponement) of an event, including in the current exceptional situation, depend on national contract law and the type and terms of your contract, including the cancellation policy of the event organiser.
According to the Unfair Contract Terms Directive 93/13/EEC , standard contract terms used by traders have to be transparent and may not unfairly limit the rights of consumers under the relevant national contract law or create a significant imbalance between the rights and obligations of the parties to the detriment of the consumer. Therefore, any term that would oblige consumers to bear the cost of the ticket for an event they cannot attend -because it was cancelled or postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak- could be considered unfair under the Unfair Contract Terms Directive 93/13/EEC and therefore non- binding on consumers.
Similarly to hotel accommodation, national law applies and Member States may have adopted specific rules for the current exceptional situation.
Communicate with the ticket seller or the event organiser (you will find its contact information on the webpage through which you purchased the ticket) in order to find a reasonable solution. Be ready to accept alternatives (such as a voucher) if full and immediate reimbursement is not possible. However, check the conditions of validity of the voucher and your likelihood to use it or be ultimately reimbursed in case of no use.
Should you fail to reach your ticket seller/event organiser or you cannot agree on the proposed solutions, you can always contact the European Consumer Centre in the country where you live (ECC Net) which can provide further guidance and help free of charge or you can try to settle the dispute using an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) procedure. If you bought your ticket online you can also use the European Online Dispute Resolution (ODR platform) to submit your complaint in any language and in any EU country. If the trader agrees, your complaint will be transferred to an ADR body.
Contact your credit card company in order to check if the “chargeback policy” applies.

micawber, maybe you were talking about flights? As regards aviation, there is indeed a directly applicable EU Regulation on passengers' rights. But it's another matter.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-20 09:50 by Topi.

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Topi
By the way, it's weird that they would need the actual physical tickets back. In 2020, you would think that all they need to verify is the order number. What the hell are they going to do with the actual (paper/pdf?) tickets?

In Germany maybe 50% of the tickets get scanned. Even at big modern arenas they sometimes just tear your tickets (ist that the right word?). So mobile tickets are not common and they often don't know how to deal with them and just mark them with a pen. Therefore yes they need the ticket back physically if a show gets postponed.

OK. My point was, they still surely must have all the orders registered in their systems. Tickets are, after all, mostly bought online at Eventim.de? Each order has an unique number to act as a placeholder/designator. You'd think they could just look that up and then cancel that order and void the barcode.

Besides, Happy24 tells his show was cancelled, not postponed. So I still kinda wonder what the ticket is good for. But hey, if that's the way Eventim rolls...=)

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Topi
OK. My point was, they still surely must have all the orders registered in their systems. Tickets are, after all, mostly bought online at Eventim.de? Each order has an unique number to act as a placeholder/designator. You'd think they could just look that up and then cancel that order and void the barcode.

Besides, Happy24 tells his show was cancelled, not postponed. So I still kinda wonder what the ticket is good for. But hey, if that's the way Eventim rolls...=)

With a postponed event you would still have the ticket and could enter many venues that don't scan tickets. This won't work here.

With cancelled events it could have something to do with the fact that the owner of a ticket ist not always the same person as the purchaser. So you buy a ticket and sell it on eBay. Who is now allowed to get a refund?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-20 10:28 by hockenheim95.

Of course the original buyer who bought the ticket from Eventim is the one getting the refund. After all, they entered the contract with Eventim in the first place. Whether the original buyer resells the tickets is outside of Eventim's hands and not their problem. But yeah, it could well explain why they want the actual tickets back.

But it still doesn't deal with the issue of pdf/paper tickets if those are/were available. In theory, you could make 100s of copies of them and resell them, especially if barcodes aren't actually scanned.

(And still, if I were Eventim, I wouldn't care whether buyer A resold the ticket to buyer B. I would still only be under contract with buyer A. I would just cancel buyer A's order, void the barcode, and give the refund to buyer A, that's it. The relationship between A and B would not be my problem.)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-20 10:41 by Topi.

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Topi
Happy24, yes, you got tickets, but you didn't get what those tickets were good for : the show on that scheduled date. Worse yet, the show is cancelled entirely, not even postponed.

So the way I see it is you did not get what you paid for. It doesn't matter whether Eventim is just the middle man/a ticket-selling platform. You as a consumer dealt with them, a service provider.

I'd still try calling the credit card company and see what they say.

Topi, what you write makes perfect sense. I will give eventim one more week, then I will contact my card provider (via my bank that issued the card, I guess? I have never done that before).

Just to make it clear - eventim doesn't want me to send back the tickets, just post the barcode numbers. I have no problem with that, the problem is, that it doesn't work. Thay have an official form for that, that I filled many times, there always appears a green hook, so it confirms the numbers, but when I press the final "Send" button, I get an error message. So I sent them the numbers in an e-amil and they replied (after several days), that I should wait for returning terms clarification. Bollocks.

Yes, you need to contact the bank that issued the card. They usually have a specific customer service phone number for credit card issues.

Thanks for clarifying the barcode issue. That makes perfect sense. It would have been nonsense to actually have to mail the physical tickets back.

Sounds like they're not making this easy for you! Best of luck fighting for your rights.

wish you succes getting your money back. as said fastest way is contacting your credit card company.

Life's just a cocktail party on the street

Today I got an e-mail from the promoter. It is long and says pretty much nothing, except that it speaks about the vouchers as a new compensation instead of money, that was agreed on by the government.

So they will probably force me to accept some voucher from a promoter. And since it is apparently a new law in Germany (since 15.5.), I doubt that the credit card company will do anything about it, since not returning money after providing zero value is obviously absolutely legal in Germany. But again - we have the same in our country now.

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Happy24

So they will probably force me to accept some voucher from a promoter.

Looks like the German Government makes the Voucher now optional (at least for Travel) - [www.Bundesregierung.de] . We have still to wait for the final law ....

Happy24, I would still at least give it a try with the credit card company.

But this wording leaves me puzzled:

"The promoter decided that you will receive a refund"

You posted that earlier.

So are they now essentially calling vouchers refunds? Are they re-defining language?

BTW, a long e-mail that says "pretty much nothing" sounds like a generic mass e-mail. Is there any way to call them / online chat, I mean getting in touch with a customer service rep?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-20 19:00 by Topi.

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Irix

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Happy24

So they will probably force me to accept some voucher from a promoter.

Looks like the German Government makes the Voucher now optional (at least for Travel) - [www.Bundesregierung.de] . We have still to wait for the final law ....

We also have this for travel (a special law) and it is also optional. But it is optional for the travel agencies, not for the custommers. The travel agency decides whether they will return money or issue a voucher. And I haven't read about a single case where any travel agency would return money. It is vouchers in 100% of cases that I read about.

EU has already wrote to our government (+ apparently to another 20 countries) that they demand an explanation, that it is in contradiction with the EU law, but that will take months and all people that are concerned will be robbed this way before there is any solution. In the end, the only thing the EU can do is to give a fine to our government, so it is only more money that the tax-payers will pay. The EU steps are absolutely useless.

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Topi
Happy24, I would still at least give it a try with the credit card company.

But this wording leaves me puzzled:

"The promoter decided that you will receive a refund"

You posted that earlier.

So are they now essentially calling vouchers refunds? Are they re-defining language?

BTW, a long e-mail that says "pretty much nothing" sounds like a generic mass e-mail. Is there any way to call them / online chat, I mean getting in touch with a customer service rep?

Topi, I agree, that that contacting the credit card company is worth a try. I will do it in a couple of days. I hope in a standard peaceful solution, but that seems to be a wishful thinking.

The eventim instructions are here: [www.eventim.de] (scroll down the page for the specific instructions for this particular concert: "The promoter decided that you will receive a refund.")

I think the instructions are absolutely clear (until they change them). When you fill the barcodes in the return form, you are asked if you want the reverse payment to be done on the same card the tickets were paid from, or on a different card. How more clear can it be? Yet eventim is playing this game...

As for the e-mail from the promoter - yes, I am sure it was absolutely generic, that they send it to everyone. I don't fell like calling them (their web is only in German) - I wanted some writen confirmation that I would be able to send to eventim. Writing them that somebody told me something on the phone would surely not work, since they act the way they do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-20 19:19 by Happy24.

[www.pollstar.com]

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Happy24
Does anybody have any experience with returning tickets for canceled shows via the German Eventim these days?

I have tickets for a concert that was supposed to take place in July in Germany. It has been canceled. Two weeks ago I recieved an e-mail from eventim, that I should fill the return form on their web.

I successfuly filled the form, it confirmed the numbers of the barcodes of my tickets, but when I pushed the "Request reverse transaction" button, I only got and error message "Your enquiry could not be executed. Please try again later."

I have tried it maybe 50 times during the last two weeks, always with the same result.

I wrote to eventim, they replied after 3 days and I was asked to send them the barcodes. I did immediately. Now, after another 5 days I got another e-mail, saying "As soon as all terms for the return have been clarified, we will inform you immediately. Until then, please refrain from sending your tickets back to us."

At the same time for this particular event eventim clearly says at their web: "The promoter has authorised us as the ticketing intermediary, to handle the ticket return process. In order to issue a refund to you, we require your tickets and contact information. Please go to and complete the ticket return form."

So the return form doesn't work and after I was instructed to send the barcodes via e-mail and I did, I was then instructed not to send those and wait for clarification, while the instructions are absolutely clear.

So - does anybody have any recent experience with eventim? Is it realistic to expect that I will get my money back or shall I get used to the fact that I won't? Thanks

Petr,

I only can say what I did with cancelled shows in the past:

[www.eventim.de]

I printed this, filled it out and sent it with the original tickets
in a registered letter to the above address. Money came back a week later.

It always worked. It´s only for tickets purchased online
on eventim.de and tickets purchased by phone!

The problem with postponed shows with a new date is:

They (eventim) are just the distributors. The promoters say: It´s
a new date. Tickets are still valid. So you can come. That
happened with my Clapton tickets for Munich next week. It was
postponed until May next year. It´s on a Friday now, so I can´t make it.
I sent them the tix anyway. Still no money, but they keep them until
the promoter´s final decision. Gangsters.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2020-05-21 12:49 by TooTough.