Freedom Fest cancelled, ticket refund assured

Organisers of the Freedom Festival South Africa have given the assurance that all outstanding ticket refunds are being attended to.

The festival, which was set to take place in April this year, was initially postponed after the company ran into difficulties.

Both the Cape Town and Pretoria events have now been cancelled.

A refund option was given to festival hopefuls in May after the initial postponement.

Many have expressed their outrage as they have not yet received their money back and have not been able to get hold of the organisers.

Morné Coetzee bought five tickets for the Pretoria show and said he has not heard anything in months since he applied for a refund.

Coetzee initially contacted Ticibox, the company in charge of ticket sales, but he was told that they are no longer involved and was unable to assist him.

Thereafter he attempted to get in touch with the organisers of Freedom Fest but did not receive any response.

Craig Kraft, Freedom Festival SA director said they are doing everything possible to see that the remaining 200-300 tickets are refunded.

“There was about R720 000 that needed to be refunded to clients of which R400 000 was done by Ticibox,” he said.

According to Kraft they lost millions of rands as they already paid for the venue, other services and had to pay a cancellation fee to all the bands.

Headline acts included international groups Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Skillet and local acts such as aKING and The Narrow.

The early bird tickets, which were sold out, went for R350 each and the standard tickets sold for R495.

Thousands of tickets were sold for the Pretoria event but Kraft said they started noticing problems with the ticket sales in Cape Town.

He added they most likely could have saved the Pretoria show as the ticket sales were much higher than in Cape Town.

At that point they had already bought most of the equipment and paid for the venues.

According to Kraft they have reached an agreement to sell off some of the equipment and the venue bookings in order to generate the money needed for the ticket refunds.

He said the agreement would be finalised in a matter of weeks.

In total, Freedom Fest still needs roughly R450 000, but Kraft has given the assurance that customers are being prioritised.

“The first thing that needs to get done is ticket refunds,” Kraft said.

‘Not a scam’

In August Red Jumpsuit Apparatus published a post on Facebook saying the group will not be performing in South Africa after all.

The group apologised to fans and alluded to the possibility of the festival being a scam.

“As soon as I saw the posting, I got a hold of them… pretty much told them it’s got to be off by close of business African time,” said Ricky Eltze, a musician who helped with the project’s social media. “They took it down and apologised.”

Kraft added that the band’s agent claimed to have been unaware of the posting being contacted about it.

He said it must be the worst scam given the fact that they paid all the artists including the international acts.

“The only band that hasn’t been paid is Shortstraw… Gangs [of Ballet] we owe fourty,”he said.

Kraft said he understands people’s frustration, but maintained only a small portion of refunds remain outstanding.

“I estimated it probably, maximum about R180 000 in refunds that have to be done,” he said.