Concert refund - Victory for the consumer

Concert promoter MCD was last night facing a bill as high as €671,000 to compensate fans after Barbra Streisand’s July concert turned into a rain-sodden farce at Castletown House in Co Kildare.

The concert was marred by poor seating arrangements, badly behaved fans and parking chaos, brought on largely by poor singing and bad weather. As a result, many people missed much, if not most of, the show.

Inundated with an unprecedented 1,144 complaints, Ann Fitzgerald, acting chief executive of the National Consumer Agency, took up the case for all ticket holders, emphasising that they were entitled to both the seat that they had purchased and the quiet enjoyment of the concert.

Some had paid more than €550 for seats that they were unable to find.

The Dún Laoghaire firm MCD yesterday promised to refund 2,500 of the 17,000 fans that attended the concert.

But Ms Fitzgerald emphasised that if individual consumers are not happy with the level of compensation being offered, they can take their cases to the Small Claims Courts.

This is a huge victory for the National Consumer Agency, for the disappointed fans, and also for consumers in general.