On Tuesday 8th February 2022, M&B Promotions (Also trading as Simple Ticketing and Easy Ticketing.co.uk) officially ceased trading, leaving all events hosted by them cancelled for thousands of ticket holders causing their customers to lose out. Most of these tickets were originally sold in 2020 and 2021, but the events were rescheduled for 2022 prior to the collapse. Some of the events included shows for Johnny Vegas, Craig David, McFly, UB40 and Comedy in the Park.

I am one of the customers affected by this situation as I purchased two tickets for a Johnny Vegas show originally scheduled for 2020, then moved to 2021 and 2022 before the firm went bust. I was never offered a refund by the company at any point during the process and the company never responded to my request to ask for a refund. 

PayPal has officially made a statement regarding this situation that they are refunding customers as an exception to their 180-day policy, however, it has been difficult for people to obtain these refunds as they are looking at the claims manually and PayPal has caused unnecessary confusion by rejecting claims related to this issue in their system (including my claim) as they are re-reviewing these according to their support team. I am currently awaiting a response related to this re-review.

However, I believe that PayPal should update its policies to provide better protection for customers for events as the 180-policy is ineffective for events as event tickets can be sold more than 180 days in advance from the originally planned date. 

For Event Tickets, the refund policy should cover the date of purchase to 1 month past the final date arranged by the event organisers and should cover cancellations by the organisers for any reasons who also fail to refund customers. This would likely prevent repeats of this issue in the future.

This should be the standard for their policies and not an exception to their policies.

As PayPal is a popular platform for payment for event tickets, better protection is needed to ensure confidence in buying tickets using their platform.

Links to articles:
PayPal Refunding Statement: https://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/people/paypal-we-will-accept-refund-claims-on-cancelled-comedy-and-music-events-in-kettering-3570988 

M&B Promotions Collapse: https://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/news/people/wicksteed-park-gigs-cancelled-as-promoters-cease-operations-3559885