StubHub to refund affected Freya Skye fans after concert ticket issue Wednesday at Landmark Credit Union Live
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — The debate over who is at fault after hundreds of attendees were met with ticket issues at the Freya Skye concert in Milwaukee Wednesday continues.
Both ticket sellers and resellers continue to point fingers, while many fans remain disappointed with how their night turned out.
Third-party marketplaces like StubHub said the tickets they sold were valid and that there was a barcode glitch that prevented some fans from getting in.
However, the music venue and Ticketmaster said those tickets were sold by scalpers and were invalid.
"That's frustrating to me because I'm not trying to call someone a liar, but clearly something went wrong because we didn't even have the option to even try to get in," said Lauren Dick of Lena, Illinois, who drove nearly three hours to Milwaukee to celebrate her 9-year-old daughter's birthday at the concert.
Dick said the tickets she purchased through StubHub still had not arrived in her account on the day of the concert, but she was reassured that the platform would send them through.
"We're not able to contact the seller, we can't get ahold of the seller," Dick said, recalling what StubHub later told her as they were waiting outside the venue. "We're really sorry you're stressed, we understand this is frustrating, but there's nothing we can do."
They ended up not being able to attend, as general tickets at the box office had sold out.
"Just the look on my daughter's face pulling up to the venue and seeing these lines of people all decked out and ready to go and not even having her get out of the car and not experience anything and just have to tell her that it happened was awful," Dick said. "To have gone through all the fun and hoops and making it special, wanting to create that core memory for her and now her core memory is just this heartbreak. She just sobbed, and then we just turned around and drove two and a half hours back home."
A joint statement from Ticketmaster and Landmark Credit Union Live reads in full below:
"Major resale marketplaces allowed scalpers to sell invalid tickets for last night's show which impacted fans at the door. We understand how frustrating this was for fans and while we were able to help many of them who purchased invalid tickets get into the show, we unfortunately could not resolve every situation. This demonstrates how difficult it is to protect fans when scalpers disregard an artist’s terms and why stronger reforms are needed to rein in predatory resale."
StubHub told CBS 58 on Friday that, from its end, it appeared Ticketmaster canceled some tickets before the show after the tickets had been transferred to buyers, explaining why some tickets or barcodes never appeared.
Despite the snafu, StubHub confirmed it is working to refund affected fans.
"Even though the cause sits with the primary ticketer, StubHub is taking care of every affected customer. Under our FanProtect Guarantee, we are refunding 120% of the order," a StubHub spokesperson said.