Austin music festival SXSW has been served with a lawsuit due to patrons not being offered refunds after it was cancelled due to COVID-19.
Back in March, the famed South By Southwest (SXSW) festival decided to cancel for the first time in 34 years of running due to COVID-19 scares. Soon after, when patrons flocked to their website to grab refunds, they were shocked to see a statement that noted how SXSW holds a strict no-refunds policy.
“SXSW does not issue refunds under any circumstances. Any and all payments made to SXSW are not refundable for any reason, including, without limitation, failure to use Credentials due to illness, acts of God, travel-related problems, acts of terrorism, loss of employment and/or duplicate purchases.”
Originally scheduled for March 12th through the 20th, the concert was cancelled after the city of Austin issued an order prohibiting mass gatherings in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. Although patrons were furious with the refund clause, the organisers did note that ticket holders would be offered free transferral of their passes to future editions of the festival, yet the offer would expire for re-registration at the end of April.
Now, the music festival has been served with a class action lawsuit due to their refusal of refunds to ticket holders. According to documents obtained by Pitchfork, the suit was filed by plaintiffs Maria Bromley and Kleber Pauta in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas Austin Division for a breach of contract.
The lawsuit calls the refund policy “unlawful, unconscionable and unenforceable”, and claims that the refund policy is “an unenforceable, illusory, unilateral option contract that allows SXSW to sell credentials, cancel the festival for any or no reason whatsoever, and retain all customer payments while leaving plaintiffs and the class without a remedy.”
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