A Nottinghamshire family returned from their holiday to find that four tickets they booked for The Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium had been cancelled. The family from Worksop were supposed to go to the concert on Saturday, September 3, but received an email whilst they were on holiday in Portugal saying that their tickets were cancelled and they had been refunded.
This was the first holiday the family were able to take abroad since 2018. In addition to Covid restrictions, the family also needed to wait until one of their sons, Bobby, was signed off by medical consultants for travel.
In 2019 Bobby was diagnosed with Aplastic Anaemia and it was found his bone marrow had stopped working. Since then he has been in and out of Sheffield Children's Hospital's oncology and haematology department.
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Bobby's dad, Richard Earl, 50, said: "Bobby has used music as a part of his recovery, and we bought him his first guitar when he was in isolation in hospital to pass away the weeks he spent there and he’s not looked back. Bobby's mum, Fiona, decided to buy tickets for the tribute concert so that Bobby could go to the show with his brothers and dad."
Richard said: "My wife diligently queued online and battled against the odds and paid nearly £1,100 for them. This is not a normal purchase for us but, given where we’ve been, she wanted to do something super special for me and our three sons.
"We’ve just returned from holiday which has been the first one abroad since 2018, we understand we are not unique with this and are indeed very fortunate to get away at the moment. We came back from holiday and needed to sort the travel arrangements out to then find the tickets had been cancelled by either Ticketmaster or the promoter under some blanket excuse which looks as if they were accusing us along with hundreds of others of gaming the system to try and get hold of the tickets.
"They had notified us of this on the 19th but to our detriment we had taken the decision to remove email apps etc from our phones to completely switch off. We were burnt out and needed the break, shame on us for thinking of our mental well being."
Ticketmaster officials said the tickets were cancelled under safeguarding measures to stop touts. They said in some instances tickets were cancelled where limits had been reached or where there were suspicions over the purchase.
But Richard added: "To say Bobby and his brothers are gutted is an understatement. This is not just about Bobby, it’s about his brothers, their excitement, time together as brothers and a dad their love of music and, importantly, being a bit normal again but also celebrating an extraordinary man Taylor Hawkins."
Due to the tickets being cancelled Bobby and his brothers were not able to go to the tribute concert, which had been organised by the Foo Fighters and the Hawkins family in honour of the late drummer who died unexpectedly at the age of 50 earlier this year while the band were in South America. The gig featured dozens of the late drummer's favourite musicians and songs.
Richard said: "I can only guess that they may have oversubscribed and oversold on tickets and this is possibly one of the reasons this has happened. Annoyingly I was offered 8 'corporate' tickets for the event from a friend in hospitality but unfortunately they had gone when I had chance to act on them. We’ve never asked for anything and always buy everything, and just wanted the tickets we’ve paid for."
The corporate tickets were priced at £420 each, and so would have cost the family almost £600 more than the tickets they initially booked. He added: "Ticketmaster's communication is awful. Their almost uncaring tone is upsetting. They gave a “well you’ve had a refund” response which we felt we should be grateful for.
"Maybe they could have sent a text message along with the email for something so important? There needs to more transparency and honesty if they did oversell or had technical issues which I guess will never happen."
A Ticketmaster spokesperson said: “In a bid to stop touts, the event organiser implemented a safeguard that cancelled any tickets where ticket limits had been exceeded or suspect purchase behaviour was identified. Any genuine fan who had a ticket cancelled can re-book the exact same ticket at the exact same price, and all impacted customers have been notified in how to do so."
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