Gnashing of Teeth

[qos]

Show of hands: how many of you enjoy logging on to your bank account the day before payday and finding that $155 has disappeared overnight?

Back in March or April, I used some of my bonus check and splurged on terrific seats for Wicked for my daughter and myself for the last Saturday in September. I was told the tickets would be mailed to me a month before the performance. I still have not received those tickets.

kateri_thinks (who allowed me to use her subscriber number to order the tickets) and I both spent a very long time on the phone yesterday with the reps from the Paramount and Broadway Across America trying to find out where my tickets were.

I finally got to talk with George, who at first couldn't figure out that Wicked was technically part of last season's package and that's why he didn't see it on the "Current Season" list of Kateri's shows. But there was no record of my purchase, only hers.

Using my credit card number, he tracked down my tickets: two tickets, correct performance -- but under a name that sounded like the "from" line of a spam email, with an address in an entirely different city. He promised me he would fix it. I asked him how we could confirm this. He said he would call me back.

So later on he left a message on my mobile phone that everything was straightened out, and the tickets would be at Will Call for me. But as I said to kateri_thinks (who had driven up to have lunch with me), what about the person whose name was on my tickets? Does someone else have them? Am I going to have to fight with someone else on show day so my daughter and I can see the show? I resolved to call George back today -- and the Paramount -- and check.

But a few minutes ago I did my morning check of my accounts (Pentacles tending!) and saw that the price of the tickets had been debited again from my account!!

I am really, really upset.

Comments

[kateri-thinks.livejournal.com]

Dang.

Why is even George a dummy? He had such potential!

*sigh*

Oh well. At least there's this: ELPHIE!!!

[wlotus.livejournal.com]

I say a 2x4 to the offender's head ought to do the trick.

[professor-mom.livejournal.com]

I don't like that automatic withdrawal thing. I don't think it should exist.

[blessed-harlot.livejournal.com]

Besmirching the Wicked experience, that is so not right!

[southernselkie.livejournal.com]

Gah! Did it work out? hug

[royalbananafish.livejournal.com]

I would call back, which I am sure you did. I would keep a record of all of this, printouts of the bank stuff, notes from the phone calls, etc. because well, I'm a lawyer and that is what we do.

This is also very much worth a scathing, yet appropriately worded, nasty letter to both the Paramount and Broadway Across America. (It is technically illegal for them to debit your account without your permission--which you did NOT give for the second debit--as well as being fraud. Since it is interstate fraud involving banks, that makes it even more interesting and bad and did I mention illegal?) You will want to mention, of course, that you did not give permission and that their actions amount to fraud--and if you were not a diligent person, they just might have gotten away with it, etc. A few notes about how much you enjoy musicals (and thus buy tickets a lot), and how all of your friends are outraged (indicating that you have talked to a lot of people--which makes it worth their while to fix it RIGHT NOW while you are still talking about it, and can thus tell all those people just how nice everyone was in fixing it promptly), are definitely in order.

For all of the bullshit you have been put through, they should offer to give you the tickets for free.