This includes festivals run by the major promoters ID&T and MOJO such as Awakenings, Mysteryland, Amsterdam Open Air, Lowlands, Woo Hah!, Pinkpop and Down The Rabbit Hole, as well as popular electronic music festivals like Dekmantel, Free Your Mind, Solar Weekend and Music On Festival.
The initiative applies when a postponed festival is postponed until 2021, provided it is no more than thirteen months after the original date.
If the holder of a price ticket attends the deferred date or does not wish, he has the option to take a voucher of equivalent economic value, adding booking or service fees, to be used on any other occasion agreed through the organizer for a minimum. 12 months.
A may NU.nl report revealed that the cultural sector was first seeking an emergency law to be put in place, deferring customers’ rights to prevent a refund entry that could lead to industry collapse, but this proved impossible, so the occasions were postponed and the Save Your Ticket program was introduced instead.
Spierenburg also noted that: “These are basically other people who have warm emotions for the event, so they will be willing to you. But if you look to force them, you get the opposite reaction. That’s exactly what happened. We have won many court cases from consumers who said they needed the cash now and were looking for a refund now.”
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Dekmantel announced its postponement to 2021 on April 23 and contacted ticket holders on May 28 to inform them of their options: transferring tickets to 2021, taking a voucher valid for use on all Dekmantel events until December 31 next year (“as long as capacity allows” with voucher holders given “a head start before the general sale resumes”), or requesting a monetary refund that will be processed no later than a month after the 2021 event.
If price ticket holders clicked on the refund option, they were directed to Tixel, a third-party service built into Eventbrite set up for organizers to handle canceled or postponed events.
Liquicity’s 2020 edition was due to take place in July and was forced into postponement in April when the Dutch government extended its ban on public events until the end of August.
Boudewijn Kustner, the label manager of Liquicity Records, told us the festival was aware of the Save Your Ticket scheme, but said: “We see the Liquicity community as our family. We prefer to ask our fans to help us, rather than forcing them. Amazingly enough, we see that pretty much everyone held on to their ticket.”