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Ticketmaster Settles with New Jersey AG Over Springsteen Ticket Sales

Ticketmaster and New Jersey's Attorney General have reached an agreement to settle charges over the company's online sale of tickets to two Bruce Springsteen concerts set for May, including allegations that customers were charged for transactions that were never completed, and that buyers were directly referred to a more expensive Ticketmaster subsidiary's website.

New Jersey's state Division of Consumer Affairs had received more than 2,000 complaints related to Ticketmaster's sale of tickets to the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concerts at New Jersey's Meadowlands on May 21 and 23. Most of the complaints fell into two categories: 1) customers' credit cards were charged for ticket purchases even when transactions failed due to technical problems with the Ticketmaster website; and 2) ticket buyers were re-directed from Ticketmaster's ?No Tickets Found? page to TicketsNow.Com (a subsidiary wholly-owned by Ticketmaster, where tickets were offered at scalper-rate prices.

The agreement announced Monday "creates a random drawing for 1,000 consumers to purchase two tickets each to one of the two concerts scheduled for May," and "those consumers who filed complaints but are not chosen in the random drawing for the opportunity to purchase tickets to the May concerts will be given a $100 Ticketmaster gift certificate and will be given the opportunity to purchase two tickets to a future Springsteen concert in New Jersey prior to a general ticket sale," according to a News Release from New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports that "Among the new revelations from Milgram's office was a special advertising deal Ticketmaster had with Google in which consumers who searched for Ticketmaster were referred instead to TicketsNow, where tickets are sold at scalpers' prices."

• AG Announces Settlement with Ticketmaster on Sale of Springsteen Tickets
• New Jersey Star-Ledger: Top Seller of Tickets Gives in to Jersey
• Reuters: Ticketmaster, NJ Settle Over Springsteen Ticket Sales
• N.Y. Daily News: Bruce Springsteen Rocks Ticketmaster Boat
• State Consumer Protection Offices (FindLaw)
• Deceptive Trade Practices Laws: State-by-State (FindLaw)
• Consumer Action Handbook (FindLaw)
• Consumers and the Law: Articles, FAQ, and More (FindLaw)

Full post as published by FindLaw's Common Law on February 24, 2009 (boomark / email).