ComplexCon faces music over NJZ 'ticket mixup'

Michael Shum

Hong Kong's consumer watchdog received nine complaints, involving outlays of HK$40,000, after fans were issued tickets to another day of the ComplexCon instead of the music festival's headline performance by famous South Korean girl group NJZ.

Fans took to social media yesterday saying that they bought their tickets to the three-day music festival, to be held from March 21 to 23, through priority booking from official ticketing website Cityline.

However, after they selected to purchase March 23 tickets to watch NJZ (formerly New Jeans) performances live, they were issued March 21 tickets after payment where the lineup consisted of American musicians including Metro Boomin, rapper MC Jin and Quavo.

Apart from airing their grievances on their own social media page, they tagged or left a message under the organizer's Instagram account "complexchinese" for assistance.

In response to the complaints, ComplexCon said it has also contacted Cityline and asked them to follow up the issue but that its hands are tied as it does not have access to Cityline's system.

But the organizer said it would roll out new ticketing arrangements for the general sale of all tickets originally slated for today.

Tickets for the March 23 NJZ performances at the festival will be sold first starting from 4pm today simultaneously on Trip.com, Cityline, Maoyan and Ctrip.

"No other ComplexCon tickets will be available for purchase [on Wednesday]," it said, adding that the public sale dates for other tickets will be shared at a later time.

Cityline also issued a statement on its website yesterday, stating the company had reviewed the transaction records with system logs but found no irregularities.

Cityline assured customers that they will carefully investigate each case following email inquiries that included detailed transaction information or a copy of the confirmation email.