You bought a ticket to a concert in March. The band cancels in June. The ticket agency emails a polite note about "force majeure" and offers a voucher valid for twelve months. Or you paid $400 for an online course, watched two lessons, realised it wasn't for you, and got told "digital products are non-refundable." Both messages sound official. Both are often wrong.
The trick is that the refund rules for a concert ticket, a train ticket, and an online course are built on different logic — and sellers deliberately blur them. Below is a breakdown by your situation: what you're actually entitled to, how to calculate the number the seller should be handing you, and where the refusal is a bluff.
If the event was cancelled: who owes you money and who doesn't
This is the case where most people lose money without needing to. When a concert, festival, or theatre performance is cancelled by the organiser, the contract has not been performed — and in most consumer protection frameworks (the EU Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU, UK consumer law, US state consumer statutes) you are entitled to a refund of the ticket price, not a voucher, unless you accept the voucher voluntarily. More on the topic: “Consumer Rights in Practice: Why 'You Opened the Box, So No Return' Is a Myth — and How Marketplace Returns Actually Work”.
The catch is who holds your money. If you bought through a primary seller (the venue's box office, the official ticketing platform), the refund obligation sits with them. If you bought through a resale marketplace, the chain gets longer and the platform's own terms decide who refunds first — usually the original seller, with the marketplace as intermediary. More on the topic: “Return Money for a Lost Parcel: What to Do When the Package Never Arrives and the Seller Goes Silent”.
A common mistake: accepting the voucher "to be helpful" and then discovering it expires before the rescheduled date. A voucher is a new offer, not a settlement of the old one. You can decline it.
What the seller often does next is cite "force majeure" in their terms. Force majeure excuses a penalty for late performance; it rarely extinguishes the obligation to return money for something never delivered. If you paid by card, the card issuer's dispute process (chargeback) is a parallel route — but only after you've asked the seller in writing and kept the proof. More on the topic: “Chargeback: Why "I Paid by Card, So the Money Will Come Back" Doesn't Work — and How to Dispute a Payment Properly”.
If you cancelled yourself: the sliding scale nobody reads
Here the numbers are less generous and more predictable. For a train ticket refund, the withheld amount is usually a percentage that grows as the departure approaches. A typical structure looks like this:
| When you cancel | What you usually get back |
|---|---|
| More than 8 hours before departure | Full fare minus a small administrative fee |
| 2–8 hours before departure | Roughly 50–70% of the fare |
| Less than 2 hours, or after departure | Often nothing, or only the unused portion of a flexible fare |
These figures vary by operator, fare class, and country, so treat them as a shape, not a rule. The deciding signal is the fare type: a cheap advance fare almost always carries a harsher cancellation scale than a flexible one. If you bought the cheapest ticket on the route, assume the penalty is the price of that discount. More on the topic: “You Signed It, So You Agreed": Why That's Not True and What to Check in a Contract Before Signing”.
For a concert ticket you can no longer attend, the story is different. Many primary sellers allow a name change or a resale through their own platform and refuse a straight refund — and in many jurisdictions that is lawful, because the event is still happening and the seller has performed. Your realistic options are resale or transfer, not a refund. Read the seller's resale rules before you list the ticket anywhere else; selling outside the official channel can void the ticket entirely.
If you want out of an online course: the 14-day window and its exceptions
This is where sellers get creative. A refund for an online course in the EU and UK typically falls under the distance-selling rules: you have 14 days from purchase to withdraw, unless you explicitly consented to immediate access and acknowledged that you lose the withdrawal right once the digital content is delivered. More on the topic: “Consumer Rights: Returns, Warranties, and Court — How to Get Your Money Back and Not Miss Deadlines”.
Here's the part most people miss. That waiver only works if the seller actually obtained your explicit consent — a pre-ticked box or a clause buried in terms does not count. If you clicked "start course" without a clear, separate confirmation that you were giving up the 14-day right, the waiver is weak, and you can argue for a refund even after starting.
A second angle: if the course was sold with a promise ("certificate on completion", "live support", "30-day money-back guarantee") and that promise wasn't delivered, the issue is no longer the withdrawal window — it's non-conformity of what you paid for. That claim doesn't expire in 14 days.
A typical situation: someone pays $600 for a course, opens three modules, finds the content is a rehash of free videos, and asks for a refund on day 20. The seller points at the 14-day clause. If the marketing promised something the course doesn't contain, the argument shifts from "I changed my mind" to "you didn't deliver what you advertised" — a much stronger position, and one worth putting in writing with screenshots.
How to calculate the number before you write anything
Before you email anyone, work out what you're owed. It takes ten minutes and changes the tone of the whole exchange.
- Find the original receipt. Not the confirmation email — the actual payment record, with the amount and currency.
- Subtract only what the terms lawfully allow. A stated administrative fee is usually fine; a "processing charge" invented after the fact is not.
- Add the booking fee question. Service and booking fees are often non-refundable by the seller's terms — but if the event was cancelled by the organiser, many regulators treat the whole amount paid, fees included, as refundable.
- Note the deadline. Most frameworks give the seller 14 days to return the money from the day they accept the claim.
This is the tedious part where a tool genuinely helps. An AI twin at asibiont.com can pull the confirmation email and the terms PDF out of your mailbox, parse the cancellation clause, and run the arithmetic — for instance, showing that of a $180 train fare cancelled five hours before departure, the operator's own scale leaves $112 owed, not the $60 they offered. What it won't do is decide whether to accept a partial offer or push for the full amount; that judgment stays with you. More on the topic: “Your Flight Was Cancelled or Your Bag Vanished: How to Get Real Money Back Under Air Passenger Rights in 2026”.
When the seller says no: the claim that gets answered
An отказ в возврате денег — a refusal — is rarely final. It is usually a first-line template. The claim that gets past it has four parts, and none of them are emotional:
- The facts: what you bought, when, for how much, and what happened.
- The rule: the specific clause in the seller's own terms or the applicable consumer protection rule that supports your position.
- The number: the exact amount you demand, with the calculation shown.
- The deadline and the consequence: a date by which you expect the refund, and a statement that you will escalate to the relevant consumer authority or card issuer if it doesn't arrive.
Keep it to one page. Attach the receipt and the cancellation notice. Send it by a method you can prove — email with delivery confirmation, or the platform's formal complaint form.
This is where the drafting is mechanical enough to hand off: an AI twin can assemble the claim letter from the parsed terms and the receipt, calculate the amount owed, and set a reminder for the 14-day deadline so the follow-up doesn't slip. Filing a formal complaint with a consumer authority, calling the seller, or going to small claims court are all human steps — no tool does those for you. More on the topic: “How to Draft a Penalty Claim Under a Contract and Get the Counterparty to Pay Without Going to Court”.
The one condition that is almost never lawful
Across all three cases, one clause keeps appearing and keeps failing: "All sales are final; no refunds under any circumstances." A blanket no-refund term cannot override statutory withdrawal rights or the obligation to refund a cancelled event. It can govern cases the law leaves to the contract — a change of mind on a resale ticket, a course you simply didn't enjoy — but it cannot erase rights you have by law. More on the topic: “Unfair Contract Terms: How to Challenge Them Before You Pay”.
That distinction is the whole game. Sellers rely on you not knowing which side of the line your case falls on. Once you do, the email you write is shorter, calmer, and far more likely to be answered with a payment rather than another voucher.
Start by finding the receipt and the terms in your inbox — that's the step that decides everything else. You can hand that search, the clause parsing, and the arithmetic to your AI twin at asibiont.com; the decision about whether to accept the offer, and the submission of the claim, remain yours.