Refunds, cancellations and chargebacks

Refund policy is one of those subjects that feels like paperwork until the week you need one, at which point it becomes the difference between a short message and an argument in public. The whole thing takes ten minutes to decide and it should be decided before the first ticket sells, because a policy written after the request arrives always looks like it was written to avoid paying.

Publish it before you sell

The event page should say what happens if a buyer cannot come, and what happens if you cancel or move the date. Two short paragraphs are enough. The most common approach for independent events is that tickets are non-refundable but freely transferable, and that a cancellation or a significant change to the event produces a full refund.

Say it plainly and put it where somebody will see it before checkout rather than in a footer. A policy that only appears after the money has moved reads as a trap even when it is completely reasonable.

Transfer solves most of it

Almost every refund request has the same cause: somebody genuinely cannot come. If your answer is a refund, you lose the revenue and you have a ticket to resell in the last week, when selling is hardest. If your answer is that they can send it to a friend, the room stays full, the money stays in place, and a new person arrives who now knows your night exists.

This works properly when transfer is a feature rather than a favour. On Dizko a buyer sends a ticket by email from the ticket page, and when the new holder claims it the original QR retires and theirs becomes the live one, so nothing has to be reissued by hand and nobody can use both. How that works.

When you have to cancel

Cancel early. The cost of cancelling rises every day you delay, because people have arranged travel, childcare and the rest of their evening around your event. Once the decision is real, do all of this on the same day:

• Announce it everywhere the event was announced, in the same places and with the same prominence.
• Email every ticket holder directly rather than relying on a social post.
• Start the refunds immediately and say how long they will take to appear.
• Give a reason. It does not have to be detailed, and a silence invites a worse explanation than the truth.
• Tell the venue, the artists and anyone who was working, before they hear it from a flyer.

A clean cancellation is survivable and people remember it as competence. A cancellation that leaks out over four days, with refunds arriving whenever, is the kind of thing a scene remembers for years.

Postponements are different, and harder

Moving a date preserves the event and splits your audience, because some people can make the new date and some cannot. Handle it by offering both: the ticket rolls over automatically, and anyone who cannot make the new date can have a refund, no explanation needed, within a stated window.

Do not quietly move the date and hope nobody notices. Somebody always notices, usually at the door.

Chargebacks

A chargeback happens when a buyer disputes the charge with their bank rather than contacting you. It costs you the ticket price, usually a fee on top, and it counts against you with the payment processor. Most of them are preventable and almost none of them start as fraud.

• Make the statement descriptor recognisable. The largest single cause of disputes is somebody not recognising a line on their card statement three weeks later.
• Answer messages quickly. People dispute charges when they cannot reach a human. A reply within a day prevents most of them.
• Send a confirmation that survives. An email with the event name, the date and the venue is what people search for when they are trying to remember what they bought.
• Refund rather than fight a fair request. A refund costs you the ticket. A lost dispute costs the ticket, the fee, and a mark against your account.

Keep the money you may owe

Refunds land after you have paid the artists and the venue. If your event has any real chance of moving or being cancelled, keep a reserve rather than treating ticket income as spent. Payout timing matters here too: money that arrives after the event cannot fund a refund that was requested before it. What to ask a platform about payouts.