Stuck waiting on a refund, Aerosmith fan decides to Get Gephardt
Jan 17, 2024, 10:36 PM | Updated: Jan 18, 2024, 6:57 am
SANDY – If you’re offered a refund, you’d expect to be able to get it.
When a Sandy couple says they were left “Livin’ On The Edge” waiting to get their money back for a postponed concert, they decided it was time to Get Gephardt.
Mike Allred said he’s been a fan of Aerosmith for nearly half a century.
“Well, shoot dude, I had all of Aerosmith’s 8-track tapes when I was 16 years old in 1975, ya know?” he said. So last May, when he and his wife heard Aerosmith’s “Peace Out” farewell tour was coming to the Delta Center in November, they decided it was time to get “Back In The Saddle Again.”
“We thought this would be our last window to see Steven Tyler and Aerosmith,” Mike Allred said.
When the Salt Lake City stop of Aerosmith’s “Peace Out” tour was postponed, fans were offered refunds. Mike Allred and his wife Melissa struggled to get their refund so it was time to Get Gephart. (KSL TV)
They bought two tickets for about $400 through Ticketmaster.
But alas, in September, Aerosmith told fans its singer had a vocal cord injury, which meant a postponement of all future tour dates, including the one in Salt Lake City.
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In an email, Ticketmaster told the Allreds they could hang on to the tickets for whenever the show gets rescheduled, or they could click a link to get a refund.
“Who wants to buy a ticket when they don’t know when the show would be?” Mike Allred asked. They decided to get a refund, but that’s when they hit a snag.
“When you click on the “request refund” and it doesn’t do anything,” Melissa Allred said.
They said the link just took them to the Ticketmaster website.
The Allreds say they emailed and messaged Ticketmaster trying to get that refund.
When the Salt Lake City stop of Aerosmith’s “Peace Out” tour was postponed, fans were offered refunds. Mike Allred and his wife Melissa struggled to get their refund so it was time to Get Gephart. (KSL TV)
But after four months of getting nowhere, they decided to call me.
“It’s become so long now I feel like it’s not right,” he said. “I feel like a large corporation is taking advantage of a lot of people.”
The KSL Investigators reached out to Ticketmaster on their behalf, not through customer service but through its public relations team.
In an email, a spokesperson for Ticketmaster wrote that they’re “not sure what the miscommunication was” but that “the fan has received their refund.”
Sure enough, that very same day, Mike Allred got a grip on his refund.
As we have reported before, ticket refunds are not guaranteed when a show is postponed, or even canceled. As we saw during the pandemic, shows all over the country were postponed or canceled, and some fans never got their money back.
It often comes down to the fine print on a ticket seller’s website.
As for the “Peace Out” tour, we reached out to Live Nation Concerts for an update. They referred us to the band’s announcement in September, which states “All the currently scheduled Peace Out shows must be postponed until sometime in 2024, with new dates to be announced as soon as we know more.”
