This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Live Business Top Stories
Trinity Street demise leads to big cock up on NME tickets
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 20 February 2009
Talking about the dangers of buying gig tickets online, it’s the NME Big Gig next week, the big Cure headlined O2 event to celebrate them being named Godlike Genius at this year’s NME Awards. You got your tickets right? Well, not if you bought them from the official NME website.
NME’s online store was, until last weekend, run by Trinity Street which, as previously reported, was put into administration by its financial backers last week. As a result tickets bought via the store have not been sent out, monies paid are all tied up in the Trinity Street liquidation, and no one really seems to know what is going on.
As a result, the Big Gig’s promoters, AEG, have sent out a message to those who bought tickets via the Trinity Street service advising fans to [a] apply for their money back off Trinity Street’s administrators Tenon Recovery and [b] buy new tickets.
Tickets have been put aside for those affected and will be reserved until the weekend, though with fans unlikely to see their money from Trinity Street for some time (if ever, depending what the company’s debt situation was like), that may be little compensation.
AEG have said they are also making some free tickets available in cheaper seats at the back for those who can’t afford to rebuy their original tickets, though it’s not clear exactly how they will be distributed. Those affected, meanwhile, are busy speaking to their credit card firms to see if there’s anyway of getting a refund through them.
AEG’s email points out that “at the time of working with Trinity Street there was no reason to believe that the company would cease trading”, which, to be fair, is almost certainly true – I don’t think any of us saw the e-commerce firm’s sudden demise coming.
That said, the promoter’s email could be a little more apologetic, given that to the punter on the street they were buying their tickets directly from NME not Trinity Street.
And it would have helped if, on one of their first email outs about the ticketing problem, AEG hadn’t pasted all the ticket holders’ email addresses into the CC line by mistake, making hundreds of email addresses public. Still, will make it easier for those disgruntled ticket holders to organise a “we hate the NME” rally.
Away from the Big Gig debacle, NME.com seems to have reinstated Backstreet Merchandise as their official online store provider, which seems like a very sensible move to me.
