Image: Facebook

Organisers Of Cancelled Maitreya Festival Respond, Punters Still Not Sure If They’re Getting Refunds

Two weeks after the cancellation of Victoria’s Maitreya Festival organisers have finally made a statement as ticket holders continue to get angrier and angrier about their inability to get a refund.

Last week Maitreya’s ticket company TryBooking said that they weren’t entirely sure if they were legally responsible to give refunds, while a Facebook page was set up by angry punters to work on getting their money back.

Now, organisers have taken to Facebook, offering very little indication of whether they will offer refunds soon.

“For those of you who have been following this fiasco, this has evolved into a very complex situation and we appreciate your patience and all your support during this time,” they wrote.

“The crew have only just returned from the site pack-down, which was a huge challenge in itself. The team is currently working on the best possible solution for everyone involved in particular all the concerns raised about ticketing.”

They have promised more information next week and thanked ticket holders for their patience, although it seems punters are rightfully done with being patient. Majority of the comments on the Facebook post are simply asking whether or not they’re getting a refund.

Consumer Affairs Victoria has since issued a statement to inthemix stating that “anyone who has bought a ticket to a music festival that is cancelled is entitled to a full refund” and that “people should request the refund from the company that sold them the festival ticket”.

They suggested that the best way for ticket holders to get their money back at the moment is to request a charge back from their bank if they purchased from a credit card. This option, however, may not be possible if they purchased the tickets more than a month ago.

A similar situation happened with this year’s Soundwave when the situation was murky as to whether the promoter AJ Maddah was responsible for offering refunds or ticketing company Eventopia was. It eventuated that even though Eventopia had forwarded ticket money to Maddah, they were still responsible for issuing refunds.

Oztix CEO Brian “Smash” Chladil told themusic.com.au that this is a common situation for smaller ticketing companies at the moment.

“We are hearing a lot of cases of small ticket companies – in order to win the business – are giving the promoter the ticket funds instead of holding them in trust for the patrons,” he said.

“That’s all okay until the promoter, having spent all the money, can’t get the event to happen and then there is no money for refunds. It’s happening more and more.”

MaitreyansFirst we would like to apologise for the delay in communication from our sideFor those of you who have been…

Posted by Yourtreya Festival on Wednesday, 23 March 2016

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