YariGuy

I hope this is a wake-up call to change the Olympic ticket distribution system.

Am I wrong in assuming that for CoSport, they actually acquire the tickets at face value (i.e., no discount off of face value)? If this is the case they made sales, incurred COGS (tickets), booked gains (20% plus other package / hotel margins), and now are refunding just the COGS part to their customers (no impact to bottom line except some transaction costs as they claim). They are not making refunds before they get the funds themselves.

Nice business if you can get it.

JapanFlyerT

"we spent your money already, sorry"

hailstorm

Medical workers protest on Twitter over Tokyo Olympic organizers' request for 500 nurses

evergrn

For those of you who read Japanse, this is a great column that describes the chaos and unresolved agenda with <3mo till the start of the Olympics.
https://www.nikkansports.com/sports/...280001107.html

- no decision yet on who's going to provide medical support for the Olympics and how
- decision on spectators delayed till June
- need for volunteer and security undeterminable until the spectator decision is made in June
- Mr.Suga claiming IOC makes the decision on whether Jpn should/shouldn't hold Olympics, which makes zero sense to anyone.

3 months to go.
As I said before, no spectators seems almost a foregone conclusion since I understand the competition venues themselves will be within the bubble. So it's delaying the inevitable till 1 month before the Olympics. Imagine running a hotel in Tokyo. You're holding thousands of July/Aug bookings that you know will be cancelled in June, and you can't do anything about it.

LarkSFO

Via Cosport: We purchased tickets ("ticket hospitality pass packages").

• Ticket plus hospitality
• 1 hospitality pass
• 1 event ticket

We received the e-mail pasted above (post #435 by xhail99) this week as well. I guess it is time to learn how much or how little of a refund we will receive. Will post our experience here.


There were some hard to get events (Karate, Judo, Baseball) that we were unable to purchase through Cosport, so we purchased tickets via our AMEX Platinum Card and the AMEX concierge. Above face value, well worth it to confirm entry to our desired events.

There were multiple disclaimers and warnings: Ticket purchases are final. Period. I think they even made sure I agreed to the terms in a recorded call. My understanding was that there would not be a refund under any circumstances.

Two or three weeks ago, received an e-mail from the AMEX concierge (unsolicited, I had not contacted them yet) informing us that due to the fact that foreign spectators would not be allowed, they / the broker would be refunding our ticket purchase. That day or the next, the credit showed up in our account. Wow.

I have never seriously considered not having the Platinum Card, as we continue to get value from the many benefits and credits they offer. (We transferred AMEX MR points for the round trip F ANA flights to Tokyo.)

However, experiences like this are what really locks me in as an AMEX customer. I was hoping to perhaps argue for some partial credit, instead without me doing anything we received our refund.

Thanks AMEX!

Wish us luck with Cosport....

xhail99

1) Cosport, for several Olympics, has been granted a Monopoly to sell tickets in the US and other markets. The only thing really having an impact on them having a license to print vast sums of money is the 20% service fee cap imposed.

2) They sold us a product (event ticket service) but did not deliver that product/service that we paid to get and use. They decided to refund our ticket money, just not ANY of the service fee we paid them! This is called fraud.

3) I think most buyers can understand that Cosport does in fact have costs and expenses and because of Covid and the cancellation of foreign visitors, perhaps extra exchange and bank fees in refunding our money as they claim. However, they should keep only a reasonable portion of the fees that we paid to offset those expenses and costs. They are keeping 100% that they would keep if the tickets were delivered and we as foreign visitors could have attended. Traditionally, companies typically charge 15-20% restocking fees when a product is returned to offset operational costs. Therefore, the fair and reasonable thing to do would have been Cosport to return our face value we paid + 80-85% of their 20% fee. Or, at most , charge a flat $50 per buyer. I would have accepted that. In fact I had a hotel that didn't have to refund and offered to refund us, less $50, which was appreciated and acceptable given the situation. They lost money and we lost a little money, but Cosport is still making 90+ % of the money they would have made had the olympics been fully operational!!!

4) Tokyo Olympics will hold the money as long as possible and as stated, at least past the Paralympic Games. Cosport also is making more money by holding it to and from Tokyo as long as possible, with interest and possibly investments just like banks do. I can't help but to think that the father/son co-ceo'sof Cosport (Sead Dizdarevic and his son Alan Dizdarevic) are sipping daquiris on a beach somewhere laughing all the way to the bank on our hard earned money. After all, they also own "Jetset" Sports:

jetsetsports DOT com/ourteam. (I am not allowed to post a full link yet, sorry.)

Click on the link so we all know who we are dealing with!!!

5) This should be criminal. Spare me the fine print legal protection, if there was an open market alternative for official tickets with even a slightly better policy, we would have bought from them but could not, because Cosport was the ONLY authorized seller. And we have to question the bidding and kickback process to be authorized by the Olympic Committee to operate a monopoly. We should all post a complaint on Cosport's BBB page, write the heads of Cosport, and the Olympic Committee because this is total BS.

BTW, although I understand the difficulty of yet another postponement and massive re-schedule of worldwide sport organizations, tv broadcast, affect on athletes, etc., I strongly believe they should have delayed them to 2022. And for Japan to save face, force China to delay by 1 year too. With over $15,000,000,000 USD at stake and all the venues for worldwide spectators and Covid still heavily in play, it was the only logical thing to do. I had scraped and planned for a trip in 2000 but we cancelled do to the Y2K scare, and now the 2020 and 2021 Tokyo Olympics are cancelled for us. And, I was going to propose to my girl on Mount Fuji and now everything is a mess..........sorry for my rant, I am just so upset. We are all already paying and losing money with airlines, hotels, etc. cancelled twice and then Cosport screws all of us even more while they profit and rub their BS in our faces. Those @@%!!$FN?^**!! .......s! I hope there is a special place in hell for them or at least their yacht blows up with them on board. Karma.

5khours

IMHO, speculation about Cosport's costs are just that... pure speculation, and they ignore costs like the long investment in building their reputation and all the selling and smoozing necessary to get the contract from the IOC and the JOC.

You read the contract and bought the service. Your bad.

The Olympics are totally corrupt and overly commercialized. Blame the buyers. You get what you pay for.

And P.S. do you think you're the only one who incurred financial costs because of Covid.

hailstorm

That's an unfair assumption. I bet that very few buyers actually read the contract before purchasing.

jib71

nnn

Naw. I think it’s perfectly fair to be angry at CoSport for not sharing in the loss one bit. You know, like plenty of other businesses do even when they don’t have to.

xhail99

I agree that the Olympics are corrupt and over commercialized and if you read, I questioned kickbacks to get the authorization to sell.

If you think Cosport isn't making money on this, I have a bridge I want to sell you.

"Build their reputation" ? Well, they now have made great strides in building their reputation, however it is a more and more a negative one.

Again most people don't read the small print (I do) and the lawyers know that and it's also why companies can also update their policies and slip things in. But, this is the largest event in the world and again they have a Monopoly and we could not purchase guaranteed official tickets anywhere else. We had no choice other than not to buy the only authorized official tickets through only them. If there was more of an open market without any collusion, say at least 3-5 companies, then pricing and refund policies would be much more competitive.

As my grandmother always said, what is right is right and what is wrong is wrong. And this is just plain wrong.

Where did I say that I was the only one who incurred financial costs due to Covid? Obviously, I am sharing with thousands of others here and online with respect to the Olympics. And beyond the Olympics, millions of people have suffered. And let's not forget that money and the Olympics isn't everything- millions of people around the world have died while others have been critically ill and this has affected countless family members, friends, and everyone as a whole.

5khours

Why do participate in a corrupt undertaking? And why complain when you get burned?

Why shouldn't they make money. They did all the work. Covid and the cancellation was not their fault.

I'm sure they took that into consideration when deciding their refund policy, but don't forget their customers are the Olympic organizing committees not the spectators.

And how is that the fault of Cosport. Blame it on the politicians who passed the Ted Stevens Act.

Beg to differ. That said, if I were you, I would explore legal political avenues to get bigger refund, but it's got nothing to do with morality.

Like I said, stop moaning.

jib71

My grandma always said “He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.”

Don’t old people talk some nonsense?

evergrn

Gotta disagree with you on this one, 5k.

I may be naive, but for me too life should be about common courtesy. Shouldn’t be about milking fineprint and technicalities. NBA gave back full refund for canceled games. UKs ticket broker is supposed to be giving back full Olympic refund. All over the world building owners have cut their tenants slack. My employer lost tons due to pandemic yet has continued to be extremely generous to the community.

There’s no doubt that Cosport is shady and disingenuous. They’re saying they won’t give back your money if you don’t pledge to not sue them. That’s insane. They send an email (last summer) saying you have 3 days to return the attached form and you won’t get refunded if you miss the 3-day deadline. They’re blaming Jpn and JOC for us not getting back the 20%, but that 20% was Cosports administrative fee / profit that Jpn/JOC actually never saw. And I’m sorry, there’s no way Cosport spends $200 to process your $1000 tickets.

Can’t blame the victim for getting fleeced by Cosport. Since Tokyo won the 2020 bid, I’d been looking forward to attending it and had glamorized it in my mind... not knowing anything about Olympics’ past controversies or about Cosport. Was I a dummy? In hindsight yes. But if the pandemic hadn’t happened, Tokyo 2020 would’ve been an experience of a lifetime for me and many others. No one could have anticipated this pandemic mess. Neither could Cosport, but they’re choosing to handle it in a piss poor way.

jib71

You nailed it right there. You're naïve.

It should not take hindsight to see that the IOC is crooked and every organization that's cosy with it is crooked. It should not take hindsight to know that global pandemics are "when" not "if" events.