Wallsend: Newcastle Dinosaur Festival refunds ignored, angry ticket buyers left asking questions

The festival was first due to be held in Wallsend in February 2021, but has been postponed five times in the past 13 months.

The company said on its Facebook page that refunds were available to anyone who could not attend the new dates of the postponed show. But buyers say the company has continuously ignored refund requests.

Wallsend MP Sonia Hornery called on the minister for fair trading to take action against the festival organisers after more than 50 customers contacted her claiming their refund requests had been ignored.

"The operator has been very hard to contact to discuss the community's concerns. They have ignored my letters and don't answer my calls when I ring them," she said.

"Sadly, when people seeking a refund contacted NSW Fair Trading, they were pointed to the refund policy on the company's website, which says that no refund will be issued and they are advised to seek legal advice."

Event organiser David Huni, based in South Africa, said the company had not done anything wrong because the terms and conditions specified that refunds would not be given where the event was cancelled because of the pandemic.

"Every organisation has terms and conditions where refunds aren't given like hotels and flights," he said.

The terms and conditions on the website state that "tickets cannot be refunded in the event of force majeure" which includes circumstances outside of the business' control such as the pandemic.

However, the Facebook page claims "tickets will remain valid for the new event dates" and those seeking a refund can email a request to the organisers.

"On Facebook we said they can get a refund but when they write to us we ask why they need the refund but we get so many emails so we can't answer all the emails at the same time. Most of the time we send a generic email to the customers and refer them to our terms and conditions which states that we can't give a refund," Mr Huni said.

"I encourage everyone to hold on because the event is coming but there is nothing that we have done that is unlawful."

Daniel Dee bought tickets for his family for about $70. After the festival was postponed he asked for a refund, but he is still trying to get his money back.

"The only time that I got a response back was when I threatened legal action," he said. "At that point they told me it was going to take 30 days to manually process a refund but that was well over two months ago and I haven't received anything."

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