15-Year-Old Lawsuit Forces Ticketmaster to Offer Discounts and Free Tickets to Millions of Concertgoers
Concertgoers, rejoice! After years of emptying our bank accounts in the name of seeing our favorite bands, not to mention the cruel joke of “convenience fee” surcharges that are anything but, we finally have a reprieve in the form of discount codes and free ticket vouchers waiting to be claimed in Ticketmaster accounts. This bounty is the result of Schlesinger v Ticketmaster, a class action lawsuit brought against Ticketmaster in 2001, settled in 2011 and finally applied in 2016 (justice apparently can't be rushed). As a result of the settlement, anyone who bought tickets through Ticketmaster from Oct. 21, 1999, to Feb. 27, 2013, is eligible for a discount code of $2.50 per ticket purchase. Even better, Ticketmaster has thrown in vouchers for a pair of tickets to certain events, specifically those at its Live Nation venues.
If you're one of the many whose eyes glazed over the subject line “Schlesinger v. Ticketmaster Class Action Settlement–Notice Regarding Discount and Ticket Codes” quietly hiding in your inbox, go to the Ticketmaster website and log in to your account to find your prize. From there, go to [insert your name]’s Account, click on Your Account and look on the left side of the page for Active Vouchers. When you click on that, you'll see a list of discount codes and links to redeem your vouchers.
Or you should. The catch is that these rewards are being doled out at a glacial pace (after all, this is a suit that took 10 years to settle and another five to implement). Some of the discount codes were erroneously labeled as expired, and earlier this morning, visitors to the voucher site were met with error messages expressing technical difficulties. Fortunately, as of the afternoon of June 21, the list of events is finally available. Sure, Beyonce's not on that list, but Bob Dylan is. As soon as the site recovers from the "overwhelming load to our systems," which some users (including this one) are still reporting, this could be a great victory for concertgoers.
