Cancelled Music Festival

Hi,

I'm new here so hope I've put this in the right place. Sorry if I haven't.

I run a website for a singer/songwriter who was booked to play at a music festival this summer and I posted the details on the site so our members were aware should they wish to go.

We found out yesterday that the event has been postponed until next year (no date, it just says 2010), without reason or any warning given and it's proving rather difficult to get hold of the organisers to find out what's going on. Some of our members have bought tickets and have been trying to get in touch regarding a refund and say that the organisers are not answering calls.

On their website, under the bit about how to go about getting tickets they have this:

All bookings made are final and cannot be cancelled, exchanged or refunded, unless the event is cancelled or postponed in this case no amendments will be made until new dates have been confirmed.
If any event is cancelled a refund will be issued for the face value of each ticket booked, and refund to the form of payment made when booked. If any event is postponed for any reason we cannot be held responsible, all tickets purchased should be used for the new date scheduled, all clients will be informed of new dates and if any changes need to be made to ticket. Any refund to be made due to a postponed event will have to be confirmed with a member of our staff, if a refund is permitted the tickets will have to be returned by special delivery with due time to resell, no exceptions will be accepted under any circumstances.

Click to expand...

Suspicious of the line "If any event is postponed for any reason we cannot be held responsible," as there is only one event and they are responsible because they're the ones who have postponed it, I looked it up and found the exact same piece of text on anyticket.co.uk - an online booking agency!

Anyway, if anybody has any advice they can give me which I can pass on to our members I'd really appreciate it. I assume the organisers cannot refuse to give refunds, but if they're not responding to phone calls or email, how can people request those refunds in the first place?

Those who have paid by credit card are ok, I think, as the credit card companies will take action, but the people who paid by debit card or cheque don't have that kind of support.

Many thanks
Saara