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Customer Complaints Customer Criticism Can Actually Help You Grow Your Business (if Leveraged Properly) Craig McClure Craig McClure | March 12, 2026

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In a Nutshell

In an ideal world, customers would never have reason to complain about your business. In reality, most consumers who have complaints won’t even tell you about it: they’ll just never come back. In this post, we look at what makes customers complain, how complaints can lead to chargebacks, and how retailers can handle complaints and strengthen customer relationships.

 

 

Customer Complaints Are Often A Precursor to Chargebacks. But They Don’t Have to Be

It’s never pleasant to deal with disgruntled customers. Tackling customer complaints head-on, however, is far better than neglecting negative feedback altogether.

See, the thing is that customers who express their frustration to you are at least giving you a chance to make things right. Far more dangerous are angry customers who you don’t hear from at all. Chances are, those shoppers are heading straight to the bank… meaning the first time you hear from them will be in the form of a chargeback. It’s for this reason that proactive and buyer-centric customer service is so important.

Viewing customer complaints as a chance to rebuild trust and loyalty — rather than an unpleasant part of doing business — can help you improve customer lifetime value and avoid disputes. In this article, I’ll provide practical guidance for managing customer complaints so that you can stop dissatisfied customers from filing chargebacks.

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What Causes Customer Complaints?

TL;DR

Expectation gaps, poor communication, fulfillment or billing issues, and overly complex return policies are the most common triggers of customer complaints.

In a broad sense, customers file complaints because they’re dissatisfied. On a more granular level, several things trigger dissatisfaction:

  • Expectation Gaps: Customers may complain when product or service quality is lower than what they anticipate.
  • Lack of Communication: Customers feel ignored, aren’t updated, or find it hard to reach you.
  • Fulfillment Issues: Late deliveries, damaged goods, or incorrect orders.
  • Billing Confusion: Unrecognized charges, surprise fees, or unclear billing descriptors.
  • Policy Friction: If your return policy is complex and unclear, customers may complain out of frustration

The bottom line is that complaints happen when customers feel trapped in a situation that’s outside their control and see no path to resolution. When customers lose faith that you’ll make things right, they’ll turn to their issuing banks, where they’ll file chargebacks to get back the money they feel they deserve.

Did You Know?

Many customers won’t even consider reaching out to you in the first place. According to the 2024 Chargeback Field Report, 53% of surveyed customers admitted to disputing a transaction without attempting to contact the merchant at all.

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Types of Customer Complaints

TL;DR

There are four types of customer complaints: Productive-Constructive, Passive-Chronic, Expressive-Venting, and Aggressive-Malicious.

Every situation is different, of course, but most complaints fall into one of four general models. This is what we can refer to as the “Complaint Continuum.”

Productive-Constructive

Productive complaints that provide useful feedback by pointing out an issue, and in many cases also suggesting a potential solution.

These benefit your business by highlighting real issues in a calm, organized way. Feedback will be productive, even if it may sometimes be unnecessarily detailed.

Passive-Chronic

Chronic complaints can be issues that continue to be raised by multiple customers. In effect, it’s one complaint raised repeatedly by the same customer.

This can be tricky because many customers dislike confrontation, and may not even attempt to contact you directly, which means the issue in question may be more serious than you realized.

Expressive-Venting

Venting complaints tend to be more personal. They’re more about relieving the customer’s frustration, although at times they can also highlight real issues.

Expressive complainers can be detailed, but that may be simply because these individuals are motivated to talk, so not all issues raised may be valid. These complaints may be frustrating, but it’s better that they vent on you, rather than on social media.

Aggressive-Malicious

Aggressive complainers are expressive, too, but they’re also controlling and loud. They know you just want them to go away, and they leverage that to their advantage.

Some complaints are outright malicious, and are designed to intentionally hurt your business. An example would be posting a scathing review that misrepresents an issue, to benefit a competitor.

Did You Know?

When it comes to friendly fraud disputes that stem from customer complaints, the revenue lost is just the start. According to LexisNexis Risk Solutions, every $1 lost to a chargeback ultimately causes $4.61 worth of damage after factoring in lost inventory, marketing spend, and chargeback fees.

The Cost of Unresolved Customer Complaints

TL;DR

Unresolved customer complaints result in chargebacks, negative word of mouth, and damage to your chargeback ratio.

Unresolved customer complaints can lead to unnecessary refunds — or worse, forced payment reversals in the form of chargebacks. If this happens, you could encounter a litany of immediate and longer-term consequences, including:

Direct Costs

Direct Costs

Unresolved complaints cause you to lose revenue, incur added logistics costs, and expend labor to resolve the situation. If a complaint becomes a chargeback, you lose the sale, the merchandise shipped, and incur a non-refundable chargeback fee that can range from $20 to $100+ per dispute.

Complaints that morph into excessive chargebacks can trigger involuntary enrollment into punitive merchant monitoring programs. These impose rigorous reporting requirements and hefty fines. If you don’t fix the problem after a while, your acquirer could close your merchant account altogether.

Indirect Costs

Indirect Costs

Did you know that 61% of customers say they’d switch to a competitor after a single poor customer service experience? But, not only do you lose that customer, you’ll probably also lose customers (or potential customers) within that person’s social network.

Negative feedback spreads faster than praise. Recent survey data shows that a dissatisfied customer will inform between 9 and 15 people about their poor experience. And since 98% of consumers consult online reviews, just one publicly broadcasted complaint can deter hundreds, or even thousands of potential leads from converting into buyers. This type of reputation damage can be difficult to undo.

Important!

Resolving a customer issue directly is always cheaper than dealing with a dispute involving a bank. Proactive customer service can help you transform a potential loss into an opportunity to enhance customer lifetime value and sidestep the steep cost of chargebacks.

Customer complaints are just one factor that can lead to chargebacks.

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10 Common Customer Complaints & How to Respond

We’ve discussed how complaints can impact your business. Next, let’s look at some of the most common complaints logged by merchants, and provide suggestions for how to prevent these complaints:

“I didn’t receive my order.”

The Problem: If an order doesn’t show up when expected, it’s easy for impatient buyers to assume the worst.

The Solution: Provide reasonable delivery expectations. Supply tracking numbers, and remember to keep customers informed of back orders or unexpected delays.

“I received my order late.”

“This isn’t what I ordered.”

“My order was damaged.”

“I was overcharged.”

“I was never refunded for a return.”

“I didn’t understand your policy.”

“I canceled this subscription.”

“I can’t reach anyone in your service department.”

“I called, but your people didn’t help me.”

Did You Know?

First-person (friendly fraud) chargebacks, whether filed innocently or maliciously, can account for between 40% and 80% of all eCommerce fraud losses

Whether they call you first or not, any of the above situations could lead a customer to call their bank and dispute a transaction. However, keep in mind that customer disputes are not always based on complete honesty.

As we said, there are only two legitimate reasons for a consumer to dispute a card transaction. That won’t stop unhappy customers from feeling justified in using misinformation to file an invalid claim. Even if they’re not aware of it, they’re committing friendly fraud, meaning you’ll wind up facing a chargeback fee.

General Tips for Customer Complaint Resolution

TL;DR

Use the RAPID framework to respond to customer complaints, and consider whether a refund request is legitimate or not before giving the customer their money back.

To address a customer complaint, you’ll need to resolve the issue itself and prevent the customer from later escalating the situation to a chargeback.

The RAPID framework, outlined below, can improve your shot at success:

Five-Step Resolution Process

The RAPID Resolution Framework

A simple process for handling customer complaints before they turn into chargebacks.

  1. 1

    Respond

    Engaging with the customer quickly demonstrates that their concern is a priority and stops them from contacting their bank.

  2. 2

    Acknowledge

    Validating the customer’s complaint without deflection can help you rebuild trust and protect your reputation.

  3. 3

    Probe

    Asking targeted questions can help you fully understand the “why” behind the customer’s complaint.

  4. 4

    Implement

    Presenting a solution during the customer’s first interaction can help you preserve customer lifetime value and avoid chargeback fees.

  5. 5

    Document

    Maintaining detailed records of every customer interaction gives you an evidence trail you can use to defend against potential chargebacks.

Note: This version of RAPID is being used here as a five-step complaint resolution process.

You’ll generally want to err on the side of offering refunds as a path to resolution. If the customer’s lifetime value is high, or if their complaint appears legitimate, you should probably just allow for a preemptive refund. The same goes for small-dollar purchases; it’s generally not worth the hassle to haggle over small amounts.

Then again, not all customer complaints are legitimate. Malicious customers who use false complaints as an excuse to get free items, for example, may still file disputes even if you fully resolve their supposed “complaints.”

Customers whose complaints fail to match order details, buyers whose stories keep changing, or cardholders who immediately threaten to file a chargeback if they don’t get what they want, are likewise probably acting in bad faith. For this reason, you’ll want to push back on customers who make unreasonable requests, including those who habitually ask for refunds, abuse your return process, or refuse refunds altogether.

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How to Prevent Customer Complaints

TL;DR

It’s cheaper to prevent complaints than to resolve them. Focus on prevention by setting accurate expectations, making it easy for customers to reach out, and simplifying steps to resolution.

If nothing else, remember this: resolving a customer complaint is cheaper than incurring a chargeback. But, preventing a customer complaint from happening is cheaper than resolving it later.

When at all possible, you’ll want to dedicate your efforts towards preventing customer complaints. Doing so can help you avoid the downstream headaches of issuing refunds or re-presenting disputed transactions. Specifically, you’ll want to:

Set Accurate Expectations

Don’t overpromise on delivery speeds or product capabilities just to secure a quick sale. Instead, provide crystal-clear product imagery and transparent pricing, with clear billing descriptors, so that customers know they’re going to receive what they anticipated. This helps you avoid customer complaints by removing a catalyst for buyer’s remorse.

Make Contact Info Easy to Find

The last thing an already annoyed buyer wants to do is dig up your hard-to-find contact information. To avoid frustrating customers even further, display your support channels prominently across your website, receipts, and order confirmations.

Offer Multiple Communication Channels

Make sure customers have multiple ways to reach you, including email, phone, and live chat, and aim for same-day response times when possible. Doing so shows respect for the customer’s time and can help you de-escalate tensions before they trigger chargebacks.

Communicate Proactively

Silence breeds anxiety, especially when money has already changed hands. Show the customer you haven’t forgotten about them by sending order confirmations, routine tracking updates, and advance alerts about potential delays. Even nudges like subscription renewal reminders can help prevent shock due to unexpected recurring charges.

Simplify Resolutions

Customers default to chargebacks when they perceive it to be easier than asking for a refund. That’s why you’ll want to draft a pro-buyer eCommerce return policy that’s easy to understand and empower your frontline support staff to issue refunds without managerial bottlenecks.

Monitor for Patterns

Treat every negative customer interaction as a piece of diagnostic feedback. Track complaint categories to identify patterns of friction, such as a problematic SKU or a confusing step in the checkout process. Tackling the root cause of the issue, rather than perpetually treating symptoms, can help you plug your revenue leaks for good.

Turning Complaints Into Chargeback Protection

Every unresolved complaint is a potential chargeback waiting to happen.

By extension, customer complaint management and chargeback management are two sides of the same coin — except in this case, there’s a silver lining, too. Thanks to the service recovery paradox, shoppers who experience a satisfying resolution after a service failure become more loyal than customers who never encountered a problem in the first place.

This is good news: it means that customer complaints aren’t inherently a threat, as long as you resolve them proactively.

As mentioned before, however, a small portion of chargeback-happy customers will lodge fake complaints for their benefit. So, you’ll nonetheless want to retain communication logs as compelling evidence to defend against potential chargebacks. Specifically, you’ll want to capture:

  • Timestamped logs of all customer communications
  • Photographic evidence, tracking numbers, and delivery confirmations
  • The resolutions offered and the subsequent customer response

In addition to collecting evidence, analyzing aggregate complaint data can help you pinpoint and address systematic issues before they cause repeated chargebacks. Likewise, establishing a complaint resolution workflow and pairing it with early warning tools like Verifi CDRN or Ethoca Alerts can give you a final opportunity to intercept and refund escalated issues before the cardholder’s issuer initiates a chargeback.

Making the Most of Consumer Complaints

If there is any good part of receiving customer complaints, it is that it provides you with feedback that can be used to strengthen your business and help avoid chargebacks.

You’ll want to collect and analyze all the complaints you get, looking for trends and patterns. For example, is there a page on which a high number of visitors abandon their carts? If so, why? Are there a number of complaints over orders shipped with a certain carrier? Is that carrier doing anything different?

It’s also a good idea to prepare concise, informative answers to common questions. These can be helpful to both your sales representatives and your customer service agents. Once you have those answers, you can use them to create an FAQ page for customers.

Finally, consider calling yourself. Track what the customer experiences when attempting to contact your customer service line. Are there long wait times? Is your automated directory too confusing? How hard is it to reach a human rep? If filing a chargeback is easier than dealing with your company, customers will go that route.

In the end, you need to understand customer complaints and up your customer service game. This can go a long way toward helping you build customer loyalty, avoid chargebacks, and ensure your business has a bright future ahead.

FAQs

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News Update

Zelle Renews Its Outreach to Minority Deposit Institutions

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Zelle Renews Its Outreach to Minority Deposit Institutions

Kevin Woodward March 30, 2026 Competitive Strategies, Person-to-Person Payments, Transaction Processing

Zelle, the peer-to-peer payment service from Early Warning Services LLC, is renewing its effort to bring more minority deposit institutions, be they banks or credit unions, into its program.

Announced Monday, this year’s effort again works with credit union service organization Velera to recruit financial institutions that primarily provide services to historically underserved communities and adds Jack Henry & Associates Inc. as another avenue. The program started in 2025 with Velera.

A Zelle spokesperson says its program is meant to help reduce barriers for these financial institutions to add Zelle as a service. Zelle says a survey it conducted of 250 banking executives finds that 99% are seeing increased pressure to move money faster, while only 6% say they can remain highly competitive without instant-payment options. They also realize consumers want instant payments, with nearly 98% saying the availability of instant payments influences how a consumer chooses a bank.

One prominent use case is sharing expenses, the spokesperson says. “As shared expenses become more common and the need to be paid quickly increases, Zelle is being used to split and settle larger costs fast between people who know and trust each other,” the spokesperson says.

In 2025, users sent more than $1.2 trillion through Zelle across 4.2 billion transactions, Zelle says. “That translates to an average of $3.4 billion moving through the network every day. People aren’t just using Zelle more often; they’re relying on it for different parts of their everyday financial lives,” the spokesperson notes.

As with most payment networks, ubiquity of access is vital to Zelle’s growth. That’s why it’s important that Zelle be available to as many financial institutions as possible. “Both Velera and Jack Henry serve as key technology and service providers to community banks and credit unions, including many minority deposit institutions. Through these partnerships, they streamline integration and make it easier for community financial institutions to offer Zelle through the trusted channels their customers already use,” the spokesperson says. Early Warning says more than 2,300 financial institutions offer Zelle, with 95% of them being community banks or credit unions.

Earlier in March, Thinkwise Federal Credit Union, in San Bernardino, Calif., became the first MDI credit union to offer Zelle through Velera, Zelle says. The National Bankers Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group, says there are 153 minority deposit institutions serving 26 million individuals.

News Update

Ransomware and Phishing Still Drive Data-Security Incidents, But AI’s Shadow Looms

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Ransomware and Phishing Still Drive Data-Security Incidents, But AI’s Shadow Looms

Jim Daly March 27, 2026 E-Commerce, Fraud & Security, Law and Regulation, Mobile Commerce, Transaction Processing

The average ransomware demand soared 70% to $4.24 million last year, while the average payment was up 36% to $682,702. Meanwhile, phishing remains the leading root cause of data-security incidents, accounting for 30%, according to the 12th annual “Data Security Incident Response Report” released late Thursday by the law firm BakerHostetler.

The report, entitled “The Risk Remains (Mostly) the Same,” draws on information and insights gained in guiding the national law firm’s clients through more than 1,250 data breaches and related security compromises. Health care was the biggest affected industry at 27% of incidents, followed by finance and insurance at 18%, business and professional services at 15%, and the retail, restaurant, and hospitality sectors at 11%.

The largest ransom demand in 2025, as cited by BakerHostetler was $98 million, while the largest paid ransom was $5.65 million, well under a $20-plus million payment in 2024. But the average paid ransom rose by more than a third from 2024’s average of $501,338.

The leading types of compromises cited in BakerHostetler’s client incidents were network intrusions at 47% and business email compromises, 32%. Five other types of compromises all accounted for under 10% each.

While phishing was the root cause of nearly one-third of incidents, the cause of some 19% was unknown. Unpatched vulnerabilities accounted for 10%. At 8% each were social engineering and human error/unintended recipients.

Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that the rapidly growing adoption of artificial intelligence is showing up in data-security incidents. At first, AI seemed mainly to be enhancing the effectiveness of phishing, but now it’s more than that, according to the report’s authors.

“When we began analyzing matter data in December 2025, AI’s role in incidents appeared limited,” the report says. “However, as we approached our March 2026 publication date, we clearly passed a tipping point. AI is moving beyond serving as just an ‘enhancer’ for phishing: it is moving toward more sophisticated social engineering support and automation, and we are now seeing the rise of ‘vibe hacking’ and autonomous coordination between agentic AIs.”

BakerHostetler cites a report from AI developer Anthropic, creator of Claude AI, in which the company disrupted fraudsters using Claude Code to automate reconnaissance, credential harvesting, and network penetration in one month’s time against approximately 17 organizations in multiple industries

Of the 1,250-plus data incidents BakerHostetler handled for clients in 2025, some 68 resulted in one or more lawsuits. Seven incidents involved payment card data, while 59 involved Social Security numbers. Many others involved medical information or health-care organizations

News Update

Live Nation Trial: States Say Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan More Sales Pitch Than Solution; OVG Admits Paid “Advocate” Role

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By Dave Clark55 minutes ago
Rendering of The Truth in Nashville | Photo via Live Nation

Rendering of The Truth in Nashville | Photo via Live Nation

A 2021 exchange between Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino and Ticketmaster executive David Marcus surfaced by the prosecution on Thursday gave the remaining state plaintiffs one of their clearest new lines of attack in the ongoing USA vs. Live Nation Entertainment trial: that Verified Fan, one of Ticketmaster’s most recognizable anti-scalper talking points, was viewed internally less as a true fan-protection tool than as something the company could use to sell artists and agents on the myth that they were trying to stop ticket brokers, rather than capture the secondary market themselves.

That exchange emerged as the state-led antitrust trial moved toward the apparent close of plaintiffs’ case and into the defense presentation, and as a parallel fight intensified over how much of the evidence the public will ever see. Plaintiffs used the week to press monopoly, damages, exclusivity, and bot-related themes through economists and Ticketmaster executives. At the same time, the docket kept filling with sealing fights, including a fresh press challenge arguing that Live Nation is trying to hide core pricing, contract, and expert materials at the center of the case.

Thursday’s Live Update Thread via Inner City Press

News Update

Senate Report Says Ticketmaster’s Own Records Undercut Its Blame of ‘Bad Actors’ for High Prices, Onsale Chaos

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By Dave Clark7 hours ago
Bad Bunny in concert - a photo that Live Nation Entertainment used as the anchor image for its earnings report for the year 2022.

Bad Bunny in concert – a photo that Live Nation Entertainment used as the anchor image for its earnings report for the year 2022.

A new Senate investigative report is putting fresh weight behind one of the central criticisms long aimed at Live Nation and Ticketmaster: that many of the practices fans most hate were not simply the byproduct of bots, brokers, or outside “bad actors,” but the result of deliberate business decisions made inside the dominant ticketing company itself.

Released Monday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the report says the panel reviewed more than 110,000 pages of internal documents, contracts, strategy materials, communications and consumer complaints during a nearly three-year inquiry into Ticketmaster’s role in soaring ticket prices and fees. The resulting picture is one of a company that, according to the report, pushed artists and venues toward earlier resale activation, more aggressive dynamic pricing, and revenue-maximizing onsale tactics even as it publicly insisted many of those outcomes were outside its control.

In the works for three years, this investigation kicked off in March of 2023, in the wake of the messy Taylor Swift Eras Tour sales meltdown. Live Nation reportedly wasn’t very forthcoming at first, requiring a subpoena filed in November of the same year to cough up relevant documents.

The report, titled So Casually Cruel: How Ticketmaster’s Monopoly Supercharges Prices and Fees, argues that Ticketmaster’s market power allowed it to shape the very conditions that later fueled public outrage. It says the company, which the report notes controls roughly 80% of the U.S. concert ticketing market by many estimates, “leveraged its control of the market to push these parties to take actions that raise consumer prices.”

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That theme runs through each of the report’s major findings.

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Resale as a growth strategy

On resale, the report does not merely contend that tickets wound up on secondary marketplaces at inflated prices. It argues that Ticketmaster increasingly treated resale — particularly fan resale integrated into its own platform — as a major growth engine, and pushed to make those tickets available as early as possible, including in some instances before tickets were available to the general public. The report points to internal Ticketmaster material showing the company tracking the time between onsale and activation of its integrated TM+ resale product, then pushing to shorten that window from days to minutes.

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The report’s Bad Bunny case study is especially striking. It cites an April 2021 internal presentation describing the artist’s onsale as “the largest onsale day in TMR history,” driven not by sheer ticket volume but by extraordinarily high average resale prices of $795 per ticket. The same presentation said Ticketmaster could have generated an additional $7 million in gross transaction value if resale had been activated during presale, and concluded: “New data capabilities will strengthen our case for fewer resale restrictions on key onsales.”

That language is likely to draw particular scrutiny because it suggests Ticketmaster was not merely reacting to resale activity elsewhere in the market. According to the report, it was actively building an internal case for getting more inventory into resale sooner, and for reducing artist-imposed limits that kept those listings from appearing. The report also says 20 of 29 Bad Bunny shows took resale orders before the local noon onsale, even though the agreed activation threshold was supposed to be much later.

Just as important for a consumer audience, the report argues that Ticketmaster’s tightly integrated resale display may have contributed to fan confusion. It cites complaints from buyers who said they did not realize they had purchased resale tickets at marked-up prices through Ticketmaster’s own interface. In one example quoted by the report, a fan wrote: “There wasn’t anything that CLEARLY alerted me that I was purchasing tickets from a third party at double [the] actual value.”

Dynamic pricing pushed from within

The report’s dynamic-pricing findings are similarly pointed. Ticketmaster has long argued that artists and venues decide whether to use Platinum tickets or dynamic pricing tools. The Senate report does not dispute that artists retain formal authority over many of those choices, but it says internal records show Ticketmaster was actively encouraging wider adoption because higher ticket prices also meant more fee revenue for the company.

Among the internal materials cited is a board presentation calling for higher revenue by “driving price, particularly through increased platinum allocations.” Another email, according to the report, discussed using one artist’s success with Pricemaster as an example for others “to see the light.” By June 2022, the report says, every one of the company’s top 30 touring acts was using Pricemaster, while the number of dynamically priced tickets sold for North American concerts had increased more than 700% between 2019 and 2022.

The supporting exhibits included in the report deepen that picture. One October 2022 deck argued that because Platinum tickets represented only about 4% of a stadium tour’s sold inventory, there was “opportunity to increase platinum allocations on upcoming tour.” Another recommended making 8% to 10% of an arena “standard” Platinum allocation. Still another described Pricemaster as “an integral pricing tool to use throughout the entire sales cycle.”

When the blame game turns inward

Some of the most politically potent material in the report deals not with ticket prices themselves but with the company’s public explanations for ticketing meltdowns.

The Subcommittee argues that Ticketmaster’s own records undercut its habit of blaming bots, extraordinary demand, or outside actors when major onsales went sideways. During Morgan Wallen’s 2021 presale, for example, the report cites an internal update stating that multiple requests were made to “slow” or “pause” the queue so teams could reprice tickets, leaving “thousands in the queue waiting for what was very few tickets at the time.” In March 2022, the report says, another employee warned of ongoing issues “affecting pricers’ ability to transact during busy onsales.”

The report then turns to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour presale — the most visible ticketing failure of the last several years. Ticketmaster publicly blamed staggering bot traffic and extraordinary fan demand. But according to emails cited by the Senate report, internal discussions pointed to aging infrastructure as part of the problem. The report says Ticketmaster President Mark Yovich attributed the outages to “old legacy pages [that] went down,” while Michael Rapino questioned internally whether the outcome would have been the same absent the outage given that demand was already known in advance.

Taken together, those examples form the report’s central argument: that Ticketmaster was not just standing in the middle of a chaotic marketplace, but was often shaping that chaos in ways that increased prices, sped inventory into more profitable channels, and strained the systems fans depended on.

The money behind the model

The financial story outlined by the report helps explain why that matters. The Subcommittee says Ticketmaster’s gross transaction value rose 164% from 2017 to 2023, while total revenue rose 203% over that stretch, outpacing the increase in the underlying face value of tickets. It also says the company locked resale economics into venue contracts, with post-2017 deals often pushing resale seller and buyer fees higher and, in one 2022 agreement, allowing Ticketmaster to keep 90% of concert resale fee revenue for ten years.

For critics of the company, those figures help explain why practices around dynamic pricing, integrated resale, and tighter control over high-demand onsales have become such a flashpoint. The report’s argument is that these were not isolated tactics, but parts of a broader system that rewarded scarcity, opacity and ever-higher consumer costs.

What comes next

The report closes with several policy recommendations, including continuing efforts to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, considering a federal cap on resale prices, and passing stronger restrictions on deceptive and abusive ticketing practices. The most broadly relevant of those proposals may be the least ideological: clearer upfront pricing, prohibitions on tickets changing price during checkout, and more conspicuous labeling or separation of resale inventory from primary listings.

Those transparency issues are likely to resonate well beyond the report’s more controversial proposals. Whatever one’s view of resale markets, the strongest new material here is not an argument that resale itself is the problem. It is the report’s contention that Ticketmaster used its dominance across primary ticketing, resale integration, pricing tools, and venue relationships to profit from confusion and scarcity — and then too often pointed the finger elsewhere when fans were furious.

TicketNews will be producing further reports on this sprawling investigative document, so stay tuned for some deep dives on what the lawmakers found.

News Update

A CHAMPION FOR FANS Congressman Pat Ryan to Speak at Ticket Fairness Conference

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Congressman Pat Ryan is a fifth-generation Hudson Valley native, proud Kingston High School alum, and the first West Point graduate to represent the Academy in the United States House of Representatives.

A decorated Army veteran, Ryan served two combat tours in Iraq and earned two Bronze Stars for his leadership and service.

Before his election to Congress in 2022, Ryan served as Ulster County Executive, where he led his community through the COVID-19 pandemic, delivered relief to working families without raising taxes, revitalized the former IBM site into iPark 87, supported small businesses, and took on corporate special interests to put money back in residents’ pockets.

In Congress, Ryan serves on the House Armed Services Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where he works to strengthen national security, invest in infrastructure, and improve daily life for Hudson Valley families. He has championed efforts to expand access to affordable health care, preserve Social Security and Medicare, prevent gun violence, and protect fundamental freedoms.

Importantly for this audience, Congressman Ryan has been a vocal advocate for fans and fairness in sports access. When Optimum cable blacked out MSG Networks without refunding subscribers, Ryan stood up for thousands of sports fans in his district—demanding accountability and pushing for the signals to be restored. He also introduced the Stop Sports Blackouts Act to protect consumers from unfair practices that leave fans paying the price. His work reflects a broader commitment to ensuring transparency, fairness, and consumer protections in the sports and entertainment marketplace.

A lifelong sports fan, Ryan cheers for West Point football and professionally roots for the Yankees, Giants, and Knicks. He lives in Gardiner with his wife, Rebecca, and their two young sons, Theo and Cameron.
News Update

Zuckerberg Set to Testify in Watershed Social Media Trial

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Zuckerberg Set to Testify in Watershed Social Media Trial
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends the WSJ Innovator Awards in New York on October 29, 2025. (Angela Weiss/Getty Images)

Wednesday, 18 February 2026 07:03 AM EST

Mark Zuckerberg will testify in an unprecedented social media trial that questions whether Meta’s platforms deliberately addict and harm children.

Urgent: Former Trump Banking Adviser’s Scary Warning for Americans… See Now

Meta’s CEO is expected to answer tough questions Wednesday from attorneys representing a now 20-year-old woman identified by the initials KGM, who claims her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts.

Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled.

Zuckerberg has testified in other trials and answered questions from Congress about youth safety on Meta’s platforms, and he apologized to families at that hearing whose lives had been upended by tragedies they believed were because of social media.

This trial, though, marks the first time Zuckerberg will answer similar questions in front of a jury. and, again, bereaved parents are expected to be in the limited courtroom seats available to the public.

The case, along with two others, has been selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could impact how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies would play out.

A Meta spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with the allegations in the lawsuit and said they are “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”

One of Meta’s attorneys, Paul Schmidt, said in his opening statement that the company is not disputing that KGM experienced mental health struggles, but rather that Instagram played a substantial factor in those struggles.

Schmidt pointed to medical records that showed a turbulent home life, and both he and an attorney representing YouTube argue she turned to their platforms as a coping mechanism or a means of escaping her mental health struggles.

Zuckerberg’s testimony comes a week after that of Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram, who said in the courtroom that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms.

Mosseri maintained that Instagram works hard to protect young people using the service, and said it’s “not good for the company, over the long run, to make decisions that profit for us but are poor for people’s well-being.”

Much of Mosseri’s questioning from the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, centered on cosmetic filters on Instagram that changed people’s appearance — a topic that Lanier is sure to revisit with Zuckerberg.

He is also expected to face questions about Instagram’s algorithm, the infinite nature of Meta’ feeds and other features the plaintiffs argue are designed to get users hooked.

Meta is also facing a separate trial in New Mexico that began last week.

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

News Update

Dem Senators Call for Investigation, Intervention on Potential Live Nation/DOJ Antitrust Settlement

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A group of Democratic U.S. Senators is demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi turn over records and communications tied to the abrupt departure of former Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Gail Slater — a shakeup that landed just weeks before the Justice Department’s landmark monopoly case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster is expected to go to trial.

In a letter dated Feb. 14 (embedded below), Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Richard Durbin, Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, Peter Welch, Adam Schiff, and Mazie Hirono said Slater’s forced resignation raises “significant concerns” about whether the Trump administration will “see through” major antitrust cases — with the Live Nation-Ticketmaster trial singled out as a flashpoint. The lawmakers asked Bondi to provide detailed logs of meetings, topics discussed, and communications involving Live Nation, the White House, and DOJ leadership as questions swirl over whether political appointees and outside lobbyists are steering enforcement decisions.

FURTHER READING: The Fix is In? DOJ antitrust turmoil boosts Live Nation bid to escape Ticketmaster monopoly trial
Consumer advocates, politicians condemn possible Live Nation settlement

The request escalates a rapidly intensifying political fight over the direction of federal antitrust enforcement after Slater’s exit, which multiple outlets reported was driven by internal clashes with DOJ leadership amid disputes over merger enforcement and high-profile matters, including the Live Nation case. Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Verge accounts have described Slater as increasingly at odds with senior leadership over how aggressively the division should pursue large mergers and monopolization cases — and whether political considerations were creeping into decisions traditionally led by career antitrust staff.

News Update

Illinois Merchants Score a Big Win in Their Battle for Interchange Relief

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Peter Lucas February 11, 2026 Acquiring, Competitive Strategies, Credit Cards, Debit Cards, Issuing/Originating, Law and Regulation, Mobile Commerce, Point-of-sale, Pricing, Transaction Processing

Illinois merchants scored a big victory late Tuesday in their battle for interchange relief as United States District Court Judge Virginia Kendall upheld the Illinois Interchange Fee Prohibition Act.

The decision, which comes after more than a year of legal wrangling, means the IFPA will go into effect July 1, a year later than originally intended. Since the measure’s passage in 2024, banking organizations have sought a permanent injunction against it. Prior to her final ruling, Kendall had issued a preliminary injunction against the IFPA in December 2024.

The law exempts Illinois merchants from paying interchange on sales tax and gratuities linked to credit and debit card transactions. In exchange, the state will cap what merchants earn for collecting sales tax at $1,000 per month.

Kendall’s ruling shot down plaintiffs’ arguments that federal banking laws, such as the National Banking Act, supersede state laws regarding banks’ ability to levy fees, such as card interchange. Kendall’s ruling stated that, while the IFPA is “novel” and “no other state has an equivalent to the IFPA,” all parties agree that issuers and acquirers do not set interchange, so the IFPA “does not directly regulate banks.” Kendall surmised that it is “the payment card networks, and not the banks, doing the actual work of [interchange] fee setting and charging” and that banks “only have a passive role in the rate-setting.”

As part of her preliminary injunction, Kendall ruled that, while financial institutions chartered outside Illinois that do business in the state do not have to comply with IFPA, Illinois-chartered financial institutions, credit unions, federally chartered credit unions, and the card networks must comply with the law.

“…this court found that the IFPA’s interchange fee provision was not preempted in large part because it was the payment card networks, and not the banks, doing the actual work of fee setting and charging,” Kendall wrote in her ruling.

Based on those findings, Kendall denied plaintiffs’ requests for a permanent injunction.

Proponents of the IFPA cheered Kendall’s ruling. The Illinois Retail Merchants Association, which backed the initial legislation, called the ruling “a historic win for Main Street over Wall Street” that “will save businesses and consumers millions of dollars a year.”

“As the first law in the nation to restrict onerous swipe fees, we hope this measure can serve as a model for other states to seek relief for businesses and working families struggling with higher costs,” Rob Karr, chief executive and president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, said in a statement.

Other merchant organizations echoed Karr’s sentiments. “This is a good and well-reasoned ruling that provides full vindication for what Illinois [legislators] did and what other states looking to regulate interchange may do,” whether it is passing a similar law or taking a different approach to interchange regulation, says Doug Kantor, an executive committee member at the Merchants Payment Coalition and general counsel for the National Association of Convenience Stores.

As of July 2025, bills to regulate interchange had been introduced or previewed before lawmakers in 22 states, according to the Electronic Transactions Association.

Plaintiffs in the case, which include the Illinois Bankers’ Association, the Illinois Credit Union League, and the American Bankers’ Association, expressed disappointment in Kendall’s ruling and vowed to appeal it.

“The decision not to protect the payment system from this misguided state law is a serious error that will unleash chaos and confusion on Illinois consumers and businesses,” co-plaintiffs said in a statement. “We cannot let that stand.”

Co-plaintiffs also renewed their call for state lawmakers to repeal the IFPA “before it can do any more harm to the Illinois economy. The fight over IFPA and any similar proposal will continue.”

The Electronic Payments Coalition, which has weighed in with an amicus brief, issued a statement saying the IFPA threatens to upend the card-based payments system and should be overturned.

“This reckless policy, which will make Illinois an outlier in the interconnected global payments system, must be fully and swiftly repealed by the Illinois General Assembly before it inflicts credit card chaos on small businesses and consumers across the state,” EPC executive chairman Richard Hunt said in a statement.

News Update

Who Is Joe Meli? Inside the Ticket Resale Ponzi Scheme Resurfaced by the Epstein Files

By Dave Clark1 day ago
Dead & Company perform in New York on Nov 1 2015. Tickets to Dead & Company shows were reportedly among those pitched to Jeffrey Epstein as part of an "investment" scheme by Joe Meli, which surfaced in emails released as part of the Epstein Files this week. (Photo - Brianga, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Dead & Company perform in New York on Nov 1 2015. Tickets to Dead & Company shows were reportedly among those pitched to Jeffrey Epstein as part of an “investment” scheme by Joe Meli, which surfaced in emails released as part of the Epstein Files this week. (Photo – Brianga, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

A newly released tranche of records tied to Jeffrey Epstein is rippling into the live-entertainment world this week, after email exchanges surfaced showing a 2015 pitch from Joe Meli to the New York financier for a high dollar ticket resale “investment.”

The pitch involved Meli – who was later arrested and jailed for what turned out to be a massive ponzi scheme – seeking a $30 million investment to bankroll bulk ticket purchases to events including the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary Fare Thee Well shows, Dead & Company dates, and Coachella.

Meli’s pitch to investors like Epstein promised big returns, pointing to his connections in the music and live entertainment business – including work promoting concerts in the tony Hamptons on Long Island and connections with Broadway insiders.

The documents were published as part of U.S. Department of Justice compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which the department says resulted in the public release of millions of responsive pages.

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Included in the released files were details that Epstein and his associates did not participate in Meli’s offer, and even later made fun of others who were caught up in the scam. An email from Richard Kahn in early 2017 to Epstein shared the text of a Bloomberg article documenting Meli’s scheme, with his addition, “Looks like there are many not too shrew=(sic) billionaires….”

From ticket “investments” to federal fraud convictions

Joe Meli rose to prominence in the New York entertainment circle beginning with work as a concert promoter. He was behind several small scale but high profile shows in the Hampton’s, including shows featuring Billy Joel and Dave Matthews. Getty photos from one such event in 2007 depict Meli alongside Joel, as well as celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Renee Zellwiger, and Katie Lee.

A decade later, Meli was charged of defrauding some 130 investors of nearly $100 million. He and associates had claimed connections with insiders that would allow them to bulk purchase significant quantities of tickets to high profile events to resell at a profit. In April 2018, Meli was sentenced to 78 months in prison, along with supervised release and massive forfeiture tied to the proceeds prosecutors said were obtained through the scheme.

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He later received a 37 month prison sentence (with 25 months to be served concurrently) tied to a scheme involving Broadway tickets following the breakup of his previous scheme, in addition to more than $4 million in additional restitution and fines.

“Joseph Meli, a recidivist fraudster, spun the web of lies that buttressed this scheme while on pretrial release in a prior theatre ticket investment fraud case in this District,” says U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss. “With today’s sentencing, the curtain has come down on Joseph Meli’s act.”

Meli’s case was also connected to a similarly high profile case involving WFAN radio host Craig Carton. Found to be running his own scheme related to the purchase and resale of tickets (that was instead funnelling investor funds to repay gambling debts), Carton attempted to claim he was himself a victim of Meli rather than a perpetrator of a separate Ponzi operation. Carton was found guilty of all charges, and received a 3.5 year sentence.

Carton has returned to WFAN sports talk radio following his release from prison. It is unclear if Meli is still in custody, or if he has been released.