An interesting article taken from a livejournal that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

www.guardian.co.uk/consumer/story/0,3605,1146144,00.html

This article highlights that not all payment methods are secure when paying for convention tickets when an event gets abruptly cancelled.

Many members get paranoid about paying by cash and worrying - but at the end of the day, this goes to show that credit cards are no more secure.

The article relates to the Star Trek convention by organisers "White Swallow" that was due to take place last May but was cancelled almost at the last minute.

Those people who don't get what they paid for, automatically sit and hope that the refunds will come. When that doesn't happen, the lightbulb in this lady's head said "ah I paid by credit card - surely with no goods received I'm covered like the paperwork says"

Right?

Wrong in this case.

Some members maybe aware that convention organisers have to use a third-party to process credit card payments as they don't have their own facilities to do so. You know someone else is doing it because you pay an admin charge for them to do so, and its in that companies name on your credit card bill.

In this instance, the third-party was Titan Magazines. They process the payment on behalf of White Swallow, get their admin charge for doing so, and forward the required payment to the organiser - who should then use the money to cover the ticket that he is going to send out.

Titan Magazines have done their bit, that's the end of their job - next please

The credit card company thinks so too. Afterall they are dealing with the Titan Magazines (not White Swallow) and so they cannot pay losses because they have no compensation to provide. It's not Titan's fault that the tickets/event haven't been provided.

At the end of the day Titan got their admin fee so they presumably didn't make any major profit, and the little person has only lost because of the inability of the organiser to provide the convention they wanted.

In the article is says that the credit card company is passing the buck - are they though? The problem in this case is that the end user can't supply the refunds for whatever reason. This obviously gives more bad press to the convention circuit on a whole

I'm not saying that you shouldn't not trust spending your monies on conventions - but there are unfortunately a lot of new organisers popping up out there.

The problem tends to occur because of all the upfront fees that organisers have to pay to secure hotels and liasing to get guests. A person's ticket money doesn't sit around in full in the organisers bank account until the event!

As shown on some of the information in the T21 convention forum regarding the cancellation of this year's Crashdown events, the organiser will have to pay a proportion of the refunds back out of his own personal funds, meaning that refunds are having to be staggered. However, he does say that he is unsure on how to keep everyone happy because there is no right way of choosing which people to refund first (although obviously payments not processed would be returned)

Perhaps the existing well-run events will have to find new methods of assuring their customer's that in the event of cancellation at least a proportion of their money can be paid back straight away (with as much of the rest to follow after a time scale)

At least that way you'd have some peace of mind that you wouldn't be completely out of pocket whilst things are being wound down.


edited for spelling only - no content altered

(Edited by Samphirette 13/02/2004 00:12)