A ticketing company has denied claims by the organiser of Donald Trump Jr’s postponed Australian tour that it is responsible for processing refunds, arguing Turning Point Australia received the money.
The eldest son of the former US president and Republican frontrunner for the 2024 US presidential election was due to speak at events in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in July last year, but the event was initially postponed to September amid claims of visa difficulties.
Organisers, Turning Point Australia, said in September the event had been postponed to December because of a “scheduling conflict” with Trump Jr. In early December, ticket holders received another email stating the event would be moved to 2024.
Guardian Australia reported this week that some ticket holders were still waiting for requested refunds and the company had failed to respond to emails for a month.
Turning Point Australia’s founder, rightwing influencer Joel Jammal, said this week the responsibility for ticketing and refunds was with the ticketing companies, saying all money was held by those organisations until after the event.
“We have had several complaints from ticket holders that ticketing agencies are being slow in refunding tickets, and we are doing our best to investigate each case,” he said. “We have given each request an undertaking that their case will be dealt with and are holding the ticketing agencies to account on each case. We have successfully resolved and refunded over 2,000 individual cases to date.”
While Ticketek has processed refunds for the Sydney show, some customers for Brisbane and Melbourne shows who bought through Ticketbud had reported not receiving refunds despite multiple requests to Turning Point Australia.
A spokesperson for Ticketbud refuted Jammal’s claim on Thursday, stating the payments through the Ticketbud system go through Stripe and are paid to the organisers.
“Unfortunately, Ticketbud is not responsible for issuing refunds,” a spokesperson said.
“Event funds are processed by the payment processor Stripe, and sent directly to the organiser of the event. Event funds are never held or processed by Ticketbud directly. The funds are held by Stripe and the event organiser.”
The spokesperson also disputed the claim that Turning Point Australia does not get the funds until after the event.
“Refunds are the sole responsibility of the organiser. Ticketbud, as an event registration and ticketing platform, does not control how the event is run and does not issue refunds on the event organisers’ behalf.”
Jammal and Stripe were approached for comment.
Jammal said this week that he is in the process of working through Trump Jr’s availability for this year, as well as the logistics for venues, and will make an announcement in March.
Turning Point Australia has not posted on its social media accounts since November. Jammal has not posted on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, YouTube, X/Twitter or TikTok since November.
