Returning tickets

The National has a pretty generous returns policy, though, and effectively bears the risk itself of not reselling seats. I realise that policies are bound to vary between venues, but I suppose the basic problem is that it's impossible for the average person to know how many tickets the theatre actually has left for a "sold out" show..

Seems I was lucky then. I once returned a full price stalls ticket because it was a mediocre seat in Row N and I had been able to get Row A on a dayseat in the morning. I figured worst come to worst I'd spend an additional £10 for a much better seat.

During the interval I walked around the stalls and saw that my original seat was occupied and indeed I had received an email during the day that they had sold my ticket and refunded the money.

Not sure if the box office person had been extra nice or if I had just been super lucky that it was sold out to the rafters.

I once returned a front-row ticket for Chicago because I'd decided I wanted to see something else instead. Not expecting to get my money back, I asked the duty manager if I could donate it and have it passed on to someone for free. He thought it was a very generous gesture. The box office disagreed, and decided they'd rather not give away a free ticket when they could sell one of their own. It made sense from a financial point of view, but I wasn't half pissed off that my attempt to be generous was subverted by the intransigence of the box office staff.

Sometimes it pays not to have collected tix in advance - I certainly don't do this with Chichester, even though I'm about to make my 3rd trip of the season and could have collected all 5 or 6 booked tix on the first occasion. I have needed to swap dates for one due to Southern Rail issues and whilst it might have been possible even if I'd had the ticket (some theatres will just cancel it online), I'm sure it was easier because I hadn't collected it.

In my experience Hampstead is the worst as they insist that you attend on the day to offer your ticket - well, if you could still get there, you wouldn't need to try to change/re-sell it, would you?!

I've had fairly good experiences, as mentioned the NT and Royal Court are accomadating, and I've had credit from both of those. The Hampstead have taken retruns and sold them as well, I was unlucky the last ticket I returned the show wasn't selling out so naturally I missed out.

I also had a good experience ringing up Delfont Mac. when although it wasn't 'policy' to resell, for sold out shows I've been put through to the respective box office and allowed to put it up for resale (and as it was sold out, get a refund)

The WMC here in Cardiff have particularly draconian returns policies, and as a result I've never tried but I know of a few not happy campers about it!

Menier has happily transferred tickets for me before, but I've never had to return but they seem fairly accomadating.

Having worked in box offices for many years in my younger days, reselling is a minefield... many systems don't allow you to put a ticket back on sale without refunding the customer, and then if the ticket doesn't re-sell, you have essentially lost money on a ticket that could easily have been sold a few days earlier. Often people are surprised their tickets don't sell at sold out shows but forget that walk-up customers are less willing to pay lots of money, so if you're handing back a £70 ticket and someone only wants to pay £20, the box office can't really do anything about it.

There's also the complication that people buying returns do so in cash, so the box office have to work out how to take that cash and refund it to you via your original payment method. Also, many people don't buy their ticket directly from the theatre, so the theatre physically can't refund you unless the whole process is dealt with in cash. I once worked at a London fringe theatre with a safe full of envelopes containing loose change from return tickets which had been sold for cash which had never been claimed.

Consider trying to deal with all this in the final 30mins of an incoming show with the usual cohort of complainers, latecomers, producers breathing down your neck about hitting sales targets, etc and it becomes an added stress that often is bottom of the list of things to worry about.