We will occasionally have a performance cancelled due to low sales. When this happens, our standard practice has been to refund all tickets sales to the patron on account credit. I am wondering how other organizations handle refunds. Do you automatically refund directly to the original method of payment?
In addition, how are order fees handled? Do you return all order fees as well?
Thank you,
Tina
If we cancel a performance (and we did this many times for events during Covid lockdown and have still had to do some this season), we email the patrons and give them the option to exchange to another event, donate their tickets or receive a refund. We give links to Google forms to fill out for the exchange and donate options. We waive the exchange fee if they choose to exchange (since we cancelled the event).
Our exchange form does have an option for "undecided" when they choose which event they want to switch to. In that case, the funds go to Account Credit - which must be used during the current season or it becomes a donation at the end of the season.
We give them a deadline to choose the exchange or donate options. After that deadline, we will go ahead and refund to the original form of payment. Depending on when they purchased their tickets, we may have to contact them to get the credit card information (since our online sales only retain the credit card information for a certain period of time).
We use a per order fee, not a per ticket fee, so if it is the only event in the order, we refund the order fee; if there are multiple events in the order, we do not refund the ticket fee.
We also do something similar when we have had to reschedule an event, though they must also let us know about wanting a refund by the deadline; otherwise, their old tickets will be valid for the rescheduled date. If they don't let us know about wanting a refund by that deadline, the refund policy on the rescheduled date becomes our normal "no refunds" policy.