Sarah Alexander was gifted £200 in Ticketmaster vouchers and wanted to use them to see a few comedy gigs with a friend.
They chose three dates but when they went to book online, Sarah realised that there wasn’t an option to book an accessible seat through Ticketmaster.
Blogger Sarah, 33, has Ehlers-Danlos syndromes – a type of connective tissue disorder – and uses a wheelchair so she needs a ticket that gives her one of the allocated spaces at the theatre.
Ticketmaster is a third party company and she was told she needed to go direct to the venues to book these tickets.
But when she contacted ATG Tickets, who sell tickets for Milton Keynes Theatre where two of the gigs were, and Royal & Derngate in Northampton, where the other gig was, she was told she couldn’t use her Ticketmaster vouchers there.
Sarah was left in a difficult situation – booking through Ticketmaster meant she might not get a wheelchair seat and the ticket could go to waste, but getting a guaranteed accessible seat would mean she would be left with the vouchers.
She says she spent hours contacting the venues and Ticketmaster without any real solution and was upset because an able-bodied person could book in just a few minutes online, with just a few clicks on the website.
Sarah tells Metro.co.uk: ‘It’s just really, really frustrating. I kind of don’t even want to go now because it’s been so much hassle.
‘I started trying to book this on Friday, and Ticketmaster only replied to me on Sunday. It just takes so much time. I had to call each venue and speak to different people there too.
‘It’s just so easy for an able-bodied person to book. I feel discriminated against and it’s not equal or fair. It just feels like that constantly when I am trying to go to things.’
Ticketmaster said that they can only sell the seats that are released to them by the venues and in these cases, neither of the venues had passed the sale of accessible seats to them.
Yesterday, three days after raising the issues, the company offered to send Sarah a cheque for the full amount of her voucher so she can spend the money directly through the venue.
Sarah is now hoping that the tickets are still available by the time the refund goes through and the cheque clears.
She adds: ‘I appreciate them rectifying the problem but it shouldn’t be this way in the first place. Anyone that requires standard seats wouldn’t have to go through all this.
‘I can’t understand why it’s so hard. They need to do better and really look at changing things to make it easier for disabled customers. We want to go out and see shows too but this kind of thing puts us off.’
Sarah said that she previously had an issue buying tickets when she signed up to a pre-sale and was told that accessible seats weren’t included in that. It was resolved when she complained on Twitter and the company agreed to book the tickets for her but she wants to highlight the difficulty disabled people face when they try to go to events.
A spokesperson for Ticketmaster said: ‘We’re sorry to hear about Sarah’s unhappiness with her experience and understand her frustration. It’s important to understand that Ticketmaster does not sell all tickets for all events, only those which are allocated to us by our clients (the venues and event organisers).’
‘In the case of the events, Sarah wishes to buy tickets for, we do not have any accessible allocation and therefore simply do not have any tickets to sell. To try and help, we’re happy to process a refund for the value of the voucher so that the tickets can be bought from the venues directly.
‘We’re committed to providing a clear process for buying accessible tickets – where we do sell accessible tickets for an event, we have an easy online system to buy tickets, the first of its kind in the UK. When we do not have accessible tickets to sell, we show this and provide details of where to go to buy those tickets instead.’
A spokesperson for the Royal & Derngate added: ‘We are committed to enabling as many people as possible to enjoy performances at our venues and to ensuring full access for customers with additional access needs.
‘As well as providing adapted shows for our audiences with particular access needs, we also recognise that it is just as important for us to be prepared for when customers with additional specific needs visit us – as such we have over 2000 customers registered on our free in house access scheme and believe this allows us to ensure we are able to provide a consistently high level of service. We would always encourage customers to book direct with the venue whenever possible.
‘At the request of promoters we manually allocate tickets to a small number of events to third party ticket agencies and work closely with these agents to ensure fair access to tickets; this includes allocating accessible seating where a request is made.
‘Ticketmaster vouchers can only be redeemed directly with that agency however we will always look to facilitate access bookings made via third party agents when we are made aware an access customer wishes to book in this way.’
We contacted ATG tickets and will update the article if we get a response from them.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/04/disabled-woman-says-ticket-sellers-wont-let-use-gift-vouchers-buy-accessible-seats-12176038/
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