VANCOUVER -- Linda Jossul and Ron Roy were excited to take their family to see Wicked, a touring production of the famous musical through Broadway Across Canada.

"I purchased tickets for a treat for my daughter and my granddaughter," Roy says. "For a Christmas present," Jossul adds. 

He bought five tickets for US$687, about $900 Canadian, in November. The show was supposed to run at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in mid-July but as the date grew closer, the show was inevitably cancelled due to COVID-19. 

"It's wicked that we don't get to see Wicked," Jossul says. 

"I was accepting of it, it's a global pandemic," Roy says. "It's understandable. But what I didn't understand was they gave a credit rather than a refund." 

The Queen Elizabeth Theatre and its box office had nothing to with the credit. The show’s promoter, Broadway Across Canada, was offering credit or refunds to subscribers and eClub members. It said Ticketmaster would issue refunds, but the couple had bought their tickets from an online reseller they had used before. 

Tickets-center.com sent Roy a message saying it wasn't offering refunds, stating: "Due to this completely unforeseen and unprecedented epidemic, we are no longer able to offer refunds for events that have been cancelled."

Instead, the company offered a 110 per cent credit on their purchase towards the cost of future tickets, bought through the website, and 25 per cent off their subsequent order. But the parameters of the credit were unclear.

"It says that there's an expiry date to the credit. And they don't tell you when it expires," Roy says, something that concerned him. But there were other shows Jossul and Roy wanted to see, so they figured they'd use the credit sooner rather than later.

"I would really like to see Come From Away," Jossul says. "I've heard so much about it and it's only playing for a very short time."

It's playing in Vancouver next March, so they went onto the site and tried to input the credit's reference number to make the purchase.

"I tried two or three days in a row – it still didn't work. It just kept on freezing up," Roy says. He was frustrated, and spent more than three hours on hold in one day, waiting to talk to someone who could help. That's when he decided to turn to McLaughlin On Your Side for help. 

After we reached out to Tickets-Center.com, the company tried to help Roy by sending him an image guide to using the credit. But he opted for a refund instead. 

"They returned my money, refunded my money in full," Roy says. And the couple is still planning to spend it on tickets to Come From Away. 

However, this time they said they would feel more comfortable purchasing their tickets directly from the promoter or its preferred ticket seller.  

Tickets-Center.com never responded to our questions for more information about their company, but did email CTV News to explain how they'd handled the complaint.