Recently, Ms. Bian from Changzhou, Jiangsu Province encountered a bad thing. She spent 1,590 yuan on Maoyan to grab a ticket to Jolin Tsai's concert. After paying, she found that she had chosen the wrong concert and hurriedly applied for a refund. Unexpectedly, she was deducted a 50% handling fee. Ms. Bian said that the 795 yuan "evaporated" in less than a minute from the time she placed the order to the time she applied for a refund. She found the official customer service but received a reply that "there are rules and restrictions and cannot be refunded at will."
"My hands were too fast" when grabbing tickets. 795 yuan "evaporated" in less than one minute
Ms. Bian is a loyal fan of Jolin Tsai. Recently, she learned that her idol was going to have a concert tour and started preparing early to grab tickets. After some understanding, she decided to go to Shanghai, which is closer to home, to attend the concert. The performance was on August 2. Because Jolin Tsai is so popular, tickets for concerts are usually sold out soon after they go on sale.
Therefore, Ms. Bian locked in the sales time at noon on July 13 in advance and planned to grab the tickets as soon as they went on sale. At 11:58 noon that day, Ms. Bian opened the Maoyan app and saw that there were still tickets left for the concert. She was very excited and immediately bought an in-field ticket for 1,590 yuan, which was also the highest ticket price for the concert.
“Because I wanted to grab tickets, I moved too fast and didn’t read the content carefully.” As soon as Ms. Bian placed the order, she found that she had booked the wrong show. She originally wanted to buy tickets for the Shanghai show on August 2, but accidentally bought them. It became the Hefei venue that started singing on July 19th. Ms. Bian immediately clicked "Apply for a refund", but because she was anxious, she did not read the refund prompts carefully. Within one minute, she completed the entire process from ticket purchase to refund. As a result, after such operations, Maoyan platform only refunded her 50% of the original ticket price, which is 795 yuan, and the rest was deducted in the name of "handling fee."
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"I was very unhappy at the time. I lost more than 700 yuan in less than a minute. I was very distressed." Ms. Bian found Maoyan official customer service and asked whether she could refund the remaining amount or cancel the refund.
The other party said: "This (refund) is irreversible and cannot be revoked." "There are rules and restrictions, and there is no way to refund at will."
reporter found that according to the refund rules announced on the ticket purchase interface of the Maoyan app, the refund fee for Jolin Tsai Hefei Station tickets from 11:00 on July 13 to 24:00 on July 14 is 50% of the ticket price.
However, Ms. Bian believes that the refund of her ticket purchase in such a short period of time will not affect the secondary sales of the tickets at all, and it is a bit unfair to be deducted so much handling fee.
Is it reasonable to be charged a 50% handling fee for immediate refund?
Regarding this matter, the reporter tried to contact Maoyan for an interview, but was rejected. If you cancel within a few minutes of placing an order, you will be charged 50% of the fee. Is this reasonable? In fact, similar incidents often occur when consumers rush to buy tickets for celebrity concerts, and relevant departments have also issued notices in this regard. In September 2023, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of Public Security jointly issued the "Notice on Further Strengthening the Standardized Management of Large-scale Commercial Performance Activities to Promote the Healthy and Orderly Development of the Performance Market" to provide guidance on the standardized management of large-scale commercial performance activities with more than 5,000 people. , clarified that "Performance organizers should establish a refund mechanism for large-scale performance events, set reasonable tiered refund fees, and protect the legitimate rights of ticket buyers to refund." However, in actual implementation, many booking platforms still go their own way.
So, how should consumers protect their rights? The reporter also consulted a lawyer. Lawyer Shao Bin, founding partner and honorary director of Shanghai Bohe Hanshang (Hangzhou) Law Firm, said that rush to buy concert tickets often has time limits and the time cycle is extremely short. In fact, grabbing tickets is all about hand speed, so many ticket buyers have no time to understand the relevant rules on the platform in detail when buying tickets. The so-called rules of the platform are essentially in vain and have been suspected of infringing on consumers' right to know. Any consumption by consumers should follow the principle of voluntary equality, and platforms should allow consumers to make voluntary choices after clearly and in detail informing them of the consumption risks. Instead of using the system's time difference to obliterate consumers' right to know, when consumers discover that they have been charged a large amount or have their payments deducted, they use platform rules to avoid responsibility.At the same time, the platform’s charging of large refund fees also involves a rationality issue. Unreasonable fees are difficult to be supported legally. If consumers think there is a problem with platform charges, they can complain to the local market supervision department or file a lawsuit in court to request a refund of relevant fees.
Netizens have different opinions on this: Some people think that the handling fee is too high and unreasonable.
Some netizens believe that the platform has reasons for this approach.
Comprehensive Procuratorate Daily Justice Network, Kankan News, Chao News
