The lights were shining, the music was deafening, and the glow sticks formed a sea of stars... On August 9, Joker Xue's "Extraterrestrial" tour concert kicked off in Suzhou. From August 10th to 11th, Zhou Shen's 9.29hz 10th Anniversary Tour Concert was held twice in Nanjing, bringing unique memories and touches of Chinese Valentine's Day to 70,000 fans.
At present, the performance service market is booming. In the first half of this year, there were 5,522 performances in Nanjing, with a total box office of 550 million yuan. According to data from Damai Platform and Lighthouse Professional Edition, various performances brought nearly 6 billion yuan in cultural tourism consumption to Changzhou last year. The ever-expanding concerts and music festivals have brought a huge amount of tourists to the city in a short period of time, becoming a strong engine for the development of Jiangsu's cultural tourism industry.
However, as the performance categories continue to be enriched and the performance market continues to expand, problems such as the platform's high refund fees, "pillar tickets" that obstruct the view of the viewing position, and "water injection" of "platter" concerts have also been exposed.
"Blind box" sales and false propaganda -
relied on the "seller's market" to act recklessly
html On August 5, Pingping watched Andy Lau's tour concert at Nanjing Youth Olympic Sports Park. After arriving at the scene, he discovered that the stage view and large The view of the screen was completely blocked, but the staff refused his request to change seats on the grounds that "there was no spare space." "There are several railings in front of me, and my line of sight is completely blocked when I sit down. When I stand up, I will disturb others, which greatly reduces the overall experience."'s mediocre experience is not unique. In a performance, Li Xing was assigned to the position of the stage extension line. "The seats on the side of the stage blocked the view. The audience sitting on my right had half of their view behind the stage, and could hardly see the performance during the whole process." According to Li Xing's estimate, there were at least 80 people sitting in the area where the view was obviously blocked.
Whether it is "pillar tickets", "railing tickets" or "wall tickets", they all point to the disadvantages of "blind box" ticketing when purchasing performance tickets online - some performances do not support consumers to choose seats by themselves when selling tickets. When I arrived at the scene, I discovered that I had been assigned to an area with obstructed vision. Many "enthusiastic fans" of offline performances told reporters that most concerts do not display seat numbers in time after purchasing tickets, and the unconditional refund period has often passed when the seats are taken out. I am not satisfied with the seats, but since defending my rights is time-consuming and labor-intensive, I can only admit that I am unlucky. Data from the Provincial Consumer Protection Commission show that since the beginning of this year, the number of consumer complaints caused by poor concert viewing experience has continued to rise.
Industry insiders said that the random distribution of concert tickets makes supervision more difficult and provides opportunities for gray transactions such as ticket reselling. Since consumers cannot select seats in advance, the organizers may collude with "scalpers" and "ticket agents" in advance to lock in seats with good views and good positions in the front row and sell them at a higher price to make high profits.
"Getting a complete and immersive concert audio-visual experience is the right that consumers should enjoy, and providing such a place and environment is also the obligation of the organizer." Wang Jie, a lawyer at Jiangsu Fade Dongheng Law Firm, said , the organizer should confirm the number of seats in advance and check whether the location meets the viewing conditions before selling tickets. If there are obvious obstacles in front of the location that affect the viewing experience, the organizer should provide necessary reminders and explanations when selling tickets. Otherwise, it will violate consumers' rights to know and fair trade.
"All entities in the theatrical performance industry should not think that the 'seller's market' dominates and they can act arbitrarily, and should not try to make the law accept the so-called 'hidden rules', let alone take the 'new problems brought by new business formats' for granted. Lu Xichun, secretary-general of the Provincial Consumer Protection Committee, believes that business models can be innovative and the performance market can be booming, but they cannot grow wildly in an environment that lacks restraints, and consumers should not have to pay for things they should not pay.
Picture source: Visual China
Overlord terms and high handling fee threshold -
What is the difficulty of "refunding tickets"?
In early June this year, college student Wang Xiyue and her roommate purchased a concert by a certain singer. Half a month later, they learned that the performance was scheduled to coincide with an exam organized by the school. When they requested a refund from the platform, they were told that a 60% handling fee would be charged."There is still more than a month before the performance. The platform refused to refund the full amount on the grounds that it would affect re-sales, and also refused to transfer it as a gift. My roommate and I lost 1,200 yuan in vain." She said helplessly.
The refund policy is inconsistent and the terms are vague... The unreasonable refund policy for performance tickets has become a target of public criticism. The relevant person in charge of the Provincial Consumer Protection Commission said that since this year, more than 90% of the complaints from the province’s performance market have been related to ticket refunds and changes. Many ticket sales platforms refuse refund applications on the grounds that concert tickets are scarce and timely. In addition, reasons such as the varying degrees of enforcement of real-name viewing, inconsistent refund policies in different cities for the same performance, and high refund fees also make it difficult to refund tickets.
Take JJ Lin’s Suzhou concert on May 25 as an example. The refund fee is divided into 4 levels according to the time period: unconditional refund, 20% of the ticket price, 50% of the ticket price, no refunds, 380-1880 yuan according to the concert Calculated based on the fare, the refund fee can range from a few hundred to nearly a thousand yuan. Also for JJ Lin’s concert, refunds for the Harbin concert on June 22 are divided into three levels according to time: unconditional refund, 30% of the ticket price, and no refund. There is no unconditional refund method for Tianjin concerts. Refunds are divided into three levels based on time periods: 3% of the ticket price, 30% of the ticket price, and no refund.
The purpose of the tiered refund policy is to balance the rights of consumers and the operability and enforceability of operators by setting reasonable tiers and refundable time periods, so as to rationalize the refund policy. However, in practice, the refund rules or standards in the performance industry are not unified, the rationality of the settings is not reflected in each company's "customized settings", consumers' "bargaining rights" and fair trade rights are not fully protected, and non-refundable tickets are mandatory. "Overlord clauses" appear from time to time.
In this regard, many ticketing platforms are a little aggrieved. Frankly speaking, the refund rules are set by the organizer, and the platform has almost no say. They have made special reminders such as pop-up windows on the refund rules as much as possible.
"Prompts are the obligations of the platform, and formulating terms following the principle of fairness is the first step." Xia Lei, a lawyer from the Provincial Consumer Protection Committee's Consumer Rights Protection Public Welfare Lawyers Group, reminded that according to the "Several Laws Applicable to the Supreme People's Court in the Trial of Online Consumer Disputes" "Issue Provisions (1)", the platform operator cannot transfer all the responsibilities legally borne to the operator, and this agreement is invalid; the platform party should clearly indicate the actual operator and clarify who is responsible for the refund; if the operator damages the In terms of consumer rights, the platform party should be jointly and severally liable if it knew about this situation or failed to take reasonable measures.
Regarding some controversies existing in the market, the person in charge of Beijing Guochao Yuedong Culture Technology Co., Ltd. said frankly, "As the organizer, when we formulate the refund rules, the market rules in different places are different. In some places, the refund fee is 20%, and some places can accept 30%. We only need to provide a stepped standard, which will be adjusted based on the situation in various places. "
Fill in service shortcomings and speed up industry standards -
Promote the standardized and orderly development of the performing arts market
The performance market is "hot and hot", and corresponding pricing rules, return and exchange rules, industry standards, etc. should also be gradually improved. Recently, the Provincial Consumer Protection Committee has interviewed a number of entertainment performance ticketing platforms and business entities such as Damai, Ticket Planet, and Ferris Wheel to forcefully promote ticket sales including but not limited to "difficulty in refunding tickets", "overlord clauses", "pillar tickets", "scalper tickets" and "false tickets". "Propaganda" and other five major issues, and actively promote the standardized and orderly development of the performing arts economy. After the interview with
, some sponsor companies and leading ticketing platforms took action. On the one hand, we will start from the subtle points where consumers have reported and complained more; on the other hand, we will cooperate with industry authorities to launch detailed rules for large-scale performance refund standards as soon as possible to make up for service shortcomings.
As a senior "concert player", Zhang Yu attends 2 to 3 concerts almost every month.Recently, she discovered some welcome changes when purchasing tickets on ticket sales platforms such as Damai.com. Taking Jay Chou's 2024 "Carnival" World Tour Concert Nanjing Station, 2024 Wang Yuan's "Living Room Carnival" Tour Concert Nanjing Station as examples, The refund rules are explained in detail in the ticket purchase details, and the key time nodes, refund rates, etc. are marked in bold red fonts. "Many fans have increased their awareness of rights protection and will remind each other to read the refund rules to avoid losses." Zhang Yu said.
"We set the refund threshold mainly to prevent scalpers from speculating on tickets. On the other hand, we are worried that some consumers will over-protect their rights." The relevant person in charge of Beijing Times Cube Culture Communication Co., Ltd. said that the company is further optimizing the refund mechanism to provide viewers with More humanized service.
"Some scalpers maliciously 'scalp' tickets, and some customers use fake certificates to maliciously refund tickets, which indeed makes our work difficult." Damai Legal Manager Chen Xuhan said that in order to handle users' refund needs as soon as possible, Damai will make efforts to upgrade its customer protection capabilities. Through hard work, the number of customer hotline personnel has increased from more than 300 to more than 600, achieving a monthly customer complaint answering rate of more than 95%.
In response to the "pillar tickets" that are of great concern to the society, the organizer of Tao Zhe's Nanjing concert and the person in charge of Jiangsu Zhongao International Sports Culture Media Co., Ltd. explained that the company issued a perspective map and locked the blocking area at the beginning of the ticket sales, but Later stage construction may be adjusted due to the requirements of the performance team, resulting in some deviations, hence the "pillar ticket". "Our response is not to do full saturation when issuing tickets, reserve some seats for viewers who buy tickets in areas with blocked views, and provide on-site replacement location services. If the viewers are still not satisfied, refunds will be arranged in a timely manner."
OVER The larger the performance, the wider the attraction radius. Taking Nanjing as an example, in the first half of this year, more than 70% of the audience for various performances came from other places. "Whether the performance market is healthy and orderly affects the city's image to a certain extent." Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, called on the government where the performance is held to actively assume the responsibility of curbing chaos and promoting standardized management. "Supervision", we must also focus on "pre-standardization" and explore the establishment of a unified performance ticketing supervision service platform across the province.
Xinhua Daily·Junction Point Reporter Make a Wish Hong Ye Lin Yuanqin
