Questions and Outrage Mount Towards Brown Paper Tickets Over Money Payment Issues

On Wednesday, I reported that the ticket selling service, Brown Paper Tickets(BPT), was having issues being able to pay theatres, non-profits and schools the funds that BPT had collected for their events.

According to users of the service, they were notified by BPT to not deposit any checks that BPT had sent them because they would bounce. Some of the customers received that notice too late, deposited the checks, only to see them bounce and incur fees by their banks.

Even worse, when questioned about where their money is, BPT doesn’t seem to have a clear answer and aren’t providing angry customers much information other than that they’ll be paid in 14-21 days - a date that I have been told by their customer service reps, could change.

But right now, the immediate concern is for the hundreds of theatre companies and schools that are suddenly out of the money they raised, money that some of them were counting on to keep their companies afloat during the COVID-19 crisis.

In the past couple of days, many of them are posting their outrage on social media and on Brown Paper Tickets’ Facebook page.

One commenter, whose theatre company is owed $14,040 from a performance a month ago said, "I got violently sick last night over all of this. We are a tiny nonprofit theatre company, who can't hold shows, but still has rent and bills to pay each month. This money was vital for us to survive.”

Another group, who is owed $8,465 from their event stated, “We worked too hard on our events. (We) Spent our own money and volunteer time for our community. The money is due to our community non-profit.”

It’s also worth mentioning that many of these theatre companies had no idea BPT would potentially do this with their funds because it’s not in their terms of agreement. I asked one event holder for a non-profit, if they would ever consent to have their ticket revenue used for overhead and other expenses."

“Absolutely not!”, she exclaimed.

I’ve spent the past couple of days talking to several theatres and schools who are owed money from BPT. The total amount owed to that group is $164,195.

I spoke to one event holder who told me that because of this, she had to tell a dozen people they wouldn’t be reimbursed for money they spent for a previous event. Another told me that it’s likely they’ll have to lay off their paid workers. “If BPT had sent us our money, I could have at least kept them on for two more months,” they said.

The ripple effect of BPT’s mismanagement of funds isn’t just hitting event holders either, it’s hitting individual ticket buyers. As canceled events continue to rise, so do the number of refund requests. However, if some ticket buyers were hoping to see refunds, they’re going to have to wait just like everyone else who used the service.

BPT has been sending this email to folks who request refunds.

None of this would have been a problem if BPT was properly managing funds that were coming in and providing the service in the way they promised to do it.

But there are some theatre companies who aren’t going to sit back and let this happen. I’ve spoken to some who are aligning with other theatre companies to pursue legal action. Some have said they have reached out to state’s attorney offices. It would appear that this is just the beginning for BPT.

Which is why they need to be as open and transparent as possible. Ambiguous statements aren’t going to do it. BPT needs to take the right action steps to fix this enormous problem. It’s becoming more and more clear that they can’t solve this problem alone. So if they haven’t done it already, I would recommend bringing in an outside accounting firm that specializes in ironing out these types of urgent issues. I would also bring them in at the personal expense of BPT’s leadership.

I would also hope that there will be some sort of investigation into what happened here. A lot of theatre companies, non-profits and schools from all over the world are impacted by this. So this could be a widespread legal issue.

And when this is all over, if BPT ever wants to regain the trust of their customers, I expect some leadership changes.

This is a big problem that needs better answers that what BPT is putting out so far. We’ll keep updating as we find out more information.