Daily Dose of Common Sense

The band Oasis played a recent gig in Manchester, England that didn’t go so smoothly. The group had to leave the stage twice for technical difficulties and the show was disrupted for more than 30 minutes. Fans were clearly disappointed, and the band’s guitarist, Noel Gallagher, offered refunds to anyone who wanted one.

At the end of gig, Noel said: “Thank you very very much, this is a free gig – let’s have it.

“Anybody who has kept their ticket will get a full refund.”

Nice, huh? 20,000 of the 70,000 at the show followed up to get their approximately $74 back.

Only, it doesn’t appear he meant what he said. Later, Noel called the refund-seekers “cheeky” (which is Brit-speak for “ballsy”) on his blog. He expressed surprise that so many concert attendees wanted their money refunded.

Really? You give a less-than-perfect show, offer refunds, and are shocked when people take you up on it? It seems pretty straight forward.

When you buy a concert ticket, you don’t expect to get your money back for any reason other than a cancellation. Oasis didn’t need to give refunds because the show did continue. (The organizers likely had heart failure upon hearing Noel’s promise.) But, the refund offer was made. Hardly seems fair to criticize people for taking advantage of it.

It’s a good example that even rock stars should think before they speak.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 20th, 2009 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.