When the Games were postponed last year, CoSport offered refunds to its customers – but only for the face value of the seats, not the 20% handling fee the company had added to each ticket. The theory then was that fans were choosing not to attend an event that could still happen.
Now that ticket buyers no longer have the option to attend, fans who waited to see it last year are wondering if CoSport will retain these surcharges again – which, for some fans, amount to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars – of your refunds, and when those refunds, total or partial, will fall back into your accounts. Some buyers who requested a refund last summer said they didn’t get their money back until January.
“You put your money in there and keep it tied up for a long time – a lot of people just can’t do it,” said Priscilla Metcalf, an ophthalmologist from Wharton, Texas, who spent more than $ 5,000 on tickets and was not optimistic about get your money back in a timely manner. “It is a real concern, especially in these economic times, when the money for many people may be tight.”
Treese spent about $ 10,000 on tickets for her and her daughter, having organized a turbulent schedule of 27 Olympic events over nine days. Like other CoSport customers, she received an email from the company over the weekend – shortly after the decision to bar foreign fans became official – but she didn’t like the details.
“CoSport has a lot of responsibility at the moment and I hope it does what is right with its customers,” said Treese. “To do it right would be to reimburse us 100 percent of what we spend.”
Alan Dizdarevic, CoSport’s executive co-chairman and son of its founder, Sead Dizdarevic, said on Saturday that the company was waiting for the International Olympic Committee and organizers in Tokyo to finalize its refund policies. He said CoSport was waiting for details on how much money Tokyo organizers would be returning to their company, and a timetable for when that would happen, before the company could return the money to its customers.
“That is their decision,” said Alan Dizdarevic of Olympic organizers. “We have no say in how they define policy.”