Ticketmaster Online cancels tickets AFTER recieving payment with zero notification; "customer support" is a joke Virginia Beach, Virginia

A month ago, a friend and I ordered "pre-sale" tickets from Ticketmaster.com. We went through a lot of trouble to be some of the first buyers,and we got pretty good seats in the fifth row. We paid using a debit card, we recieved a confirmation e-mail, and the money was taken from the account. We assumed everything was going as planned.

Several weeks later, we recieved an email saying that the billing address on the card was different from the mailing address that we gave them. This email had come about a week earlier we're broke college students, and we didn't have Internet access in either of our homes at the time. We began calling and e-mailing Ticketmaster to try and rectify the problem. We soon realized that we had been ripped off.

Ticketmaster had voided our tickets with no notification (Watch out! The 'fine print' on their "policies" page allows for this!). They claimed that the bank would not verify the address for them. When we called the bank, however, to find out what address they had (we were baffled because there is only one adress where we recieve mail), we found out that the bank had the exact same billing address that we gave ticketmaster.

When I called their customer service line, I very nicely explained that I was dissatisfied with the fact that we had lost our tickets. I asked them if there was any way that we could be placed in similar seats or if we could be notified if any floor seats went on sale (by this time the only seats available are on the second balcony). I was vey rudely told in several different ways that this was all my fault, that they weren't liable for it, and that they didn't have to do anything to make it right.

They told me that this policy is in place to protect the customer; if the addresses don't match, they assume that it is fraud. Why then, if they assumed that our order was fraudulent, did they take the payment out of the bank account? And why, if they care so much about protecting their customers, do they care so little about making the same customers happy?

In all their e-mail correspondence, they have never mentioned refunding the money. I am hoping and praying that they will, but that still won't make it right. If we had wanted the money, we would have kept it in the first place. If we had wanted nosebleed seats, we wouldn't have scrambled like maniacs to get pre-sale tickets.

Ticketmaster has a monopoly over ticket sales in our area. They obviously don't feel the need to honor their promises or to please their customers; After all, what other choice do we have?

Crystal
Springfield, Louisiana
U.S.A.