Events ticketing companies have been hit hard by the cancellation or postponing of nearly all the year’s events but for many it’s hard to feel bad.

At the best of times, ticketing companies are in and out of controversy for excess charges, questionable refund policies, scalping problems, and so on. This year has seen Ticketmaster and then Stubhub face legal wrath over refunds of cancelled events, and now Viagogo are the latest to find themselves embroiled in a lawsuit.

A new suit opened in Florida accuses Viagogo of wrongly classing cancelled shows as postponed. Under their own terms, this allows the secondary event ticketing marketplace to avoid issuing refunds on their own guarantee scheme.

The lawsuit was opened by a fan who bought tickets to a Tool show through their platform which was then cancelled. The plaintiff found out that the show was cancelled through the band’s website, which stated that all Tool shows for the year were cancelled and not postponed.

The lawsuit states: “Plaintiff contacted defendant on multiple occasions from April through July. [Viagogo] indicated that the show was ‘rescheduled from its original date’ and that, ‘it was decided that tickets which had already been issued would remain valid for the new dates’.

Of course, how a ticket can continue to be valid for a non-existent event raised serious questions and now Viagogo find themselves facing a lawsuit.

Ticketing companies, like many industries around the world, have been pushed into a difficult position by COVID cancellations but it has been clearly established by now that customers want ticket refunds with no BS. If it could get worse, StubHub who faced legal action for refusing to issue refunds earlier this year are owned by Viagogo. It seems that ticketing companies will never learn.