box-office-terms

---
name: box-office-terms
description: Produces one page of ticket terms for a dated event, written in the words a customer will actually read, covering refunds, transfers, name changes, cancellation by the venue, lateness, age limits and what happens if the act pulls out, with every term checked against the unfair terms rules and the statutory rights it cannot take away. Use before the first ticket goes on sale, or after the first refund argument.
---

# Refunds, transfers and cancellations agreed in writing before you sell

You give this the event, the price, how tickets are sold, and the decisions you have already made about refunds and changes. You get back one page of terms in plain English, a note of which statutory rights cannot be excluded whatever the page says, the terms that would be struck out as unfair with the paragraph that strikes them, and the list of what you must tell a buyer before they pay. It will not tell you your terms are lawful, and it will not write a term that takes away a right the law gives.

## What it does

1. **Decide first whether the sale is at a distance, because that decides which information you must give before you take any money.** A ticket bought online, over the phone or by message is a distance contract, and Schedule 2 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 lists what the buyer must be told first. Among the items: "the identity of the trader (such as the trader's trading name)", "the geographical address at which the trader is established and, where available, the trader's telephone number, fax number and e-mail address", "the total price of the goods or services inclusive of taxes", "the arrangements for payment, delivery, performance, and the time by which the trader undertakes to deliver the goods or to perform the services", and "where applicable, the trader's complaint handling policy". A ticket page that names no address and no way to complain is missing information the regulations require, whatever the refund policy says.

2. **Say out loud, on the page, that there is no fourteen day cooling off right, because for a dated event there usually is not, and the buyer will assume there is.** Regulation 28(1)(h) of the same regulations removes the cancellation right for "the supply of accommodation, transport of goods, vehicle rental services, catering or services related to leisure activities, if the contract provides for a specific date or period of performance." A gig on 14 November is a leisure service on a specific date, so the usual online cancellation right does not apply. That is not a licence to stay quiet about it: Schedule 2 requires that "where under regulation 28, 36 or 37 there is no right to cancel or the right to cancel may be lost, the information that the consumer will not benefit from a right to cancel". Not telling them is itself the breach.

3. **Write down which rights the page cannot take away, and put them above the refund policy rather than below it.** Section 49 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats every contract to supply a service as including a term that "the trader must perform the service with reasonable care and skill". Section 50 makes binding anything the trader said or wrote about the service that the consumer took into account. Where the service is not performed as promised, section 54 gives the consumer a right to repeat performance or a price reduction, and where a refund is due, section 56 requires it "without undue delay, and in any event within 14 days", by the same means the consumer paid, with no fee charged for making it. Section 57 stops a trader excluding liability for breaching those rights. So "no refunds under any circumstances" is not a policy, it is a sentence with no legal effect against a cancelled night.

4. **Separate the three different things owners call a refund, and give each its own paragraph.** They are not the same and merging them is what produces the argument at the door. First: the customer changes their mind, which is the venue's discretion and where the policy actually lives. Second: the customer cannot come because of illness, weather or transport, which is also discretion unless you promised otherwise, and which is where a transfer or a name change is usually the better answer than money. Third: the venue cancels, moves the date, or delivers something materially different from what was sold, which is not discretion at all and where sections 54 to 56 govern. Write the third paragraph first, because it is the one a court would read first.

5. **Check every term you have written against the list of terms that may be regarded as unfair, and strike the ones that land on it.** Schedule 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 names them. Paragraph 4 catches "A term which has the object or effect of permitting the trader to retain sums paid by the consumer where the consumer decides not to conclude or perform the contract, without providing for the consumer to receive compensation of an equivalent amount from the trader where the trader is the party cancelling the contract." Paragraph 5 catches a term requiring the consumer to pay "a disproportionately high sum in compensation or for services which have not been supplied". Paragraph 11 catches a term "enabling the trader to alter the terms of the contract unilaterally without a valid reason which is specified in the contract", and paragraph 13 the same for altering the service itself. Section 62 is the test they serve: a term is unfair if "contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations under the contract to the detriment of the consumer", and "An unfair term of a consumer contract is not binding on the consumer".

6. **State the price on the page exactly as it is stated everywhere else, with the booking fee inside it.** Section 230(4) of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 says "the total price of a product includes any fees, taxes, charges or other payments that the consumer will necessarily incur if the consumer purchases the product", and the CMA's guidance states that showing a headline price and "subsequently introducing additional mandatory charges as consumers proceed with a purchase or transaction, sometimes called 'drip pricing', is prohibited." If the ticketing platform adds its fee at checkout and you cannot change that, the terms page says the total including the fee and names the platform, so the customer meets the real number before they commit rather than after.

7. **Write the line about the act, the lineup or the menu changing, and make it specific enough to be a valid reason.** Paragraph 11 of Schedule 2 allows unilateral alteration only "without a valid reason which is specified in the contract", so a term reserving the right to change anything at any time is exactly the term the paragraph is written about. A usable line names what may change, what triggers it, and what the customer gets if it does: for example, that a named support act may be replaced and the ticket remains valid, while a change of the headline act or the date entitles the buyer to a refund of the total price. Write it so an owner could read it aloud to a buyer at the bar without embarrassment. If it cannot be read aloud, it will not survive being read out in a small claim either.

8. **Cover the small things that cause most of the real arguments, because they are cheaper to settle in writing than at the door.** Latecomers and whether they are admitted between sets. Whether the ticket is a named ticket and whether a name can be changed, by when and at what cost. Whether resale is permitted and what happens to a resold ticket at the door. Age limits and what identification is accepted. Standing or seated, and whether a seat is allocated. What is included: a drink, food, a table, a cloakroom. Accessibility, and who to contact in advance. Lost or undelivered tickets. Photography and filming. Behaviour and the circumstances in which somebody is asked to leave without a refund. Each one is a sentence. Each missing one is an evening spent arguing.

9. **Record where the terms are shown, at what point in the buying journey, and get the buyer's acceptance recorded before payment rather than after.** The page lists: the exact URL or place the terms sit, the step at which the buyer sees them, whether they must tick or click to proceed, the version date of the terms, and where the record of acceptance is stored. Then a version log: what changed, when, and who approved it. Terms that were published after the ticket was sold are not the terms of that sale, and an owner who cannot show which version a buyer agreed to has, in practice, the version most favourable to the buyer.

## Then it checks

1. Every item in the pre contract information list is present and filled in with a real value, including a trading name, a geographical address, a contact route and a complaint route, with nothing reading "see website".
2. The page states in terms that there is no fourteen day cancellation right for a dated event, in a place the buyer meets before paying, and cites nothing it cannot support.
3. The venue cancellation paragraph is written, is placed before the change of mind paragraph, and nowhere states or implies that no refund is available when the venue cancels or materially changes the event.
4. No surviving term excludes or limits the trader's liability for failing to perform with reasonable care and skill, and no term sets a refund period longer than 14 days or charges a fee for making a refund.
5. Every term has been tested against Schedule 2 paragraphs 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13 and 14, and each struck term carries the paragraph number that struck it rather than a general note.
6. The total price on the terms page matches the total price shown in every sales channel, and any fee added by a third party platform is named on the page with its amount.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is. Terms published under the business name go to the person who owns that business before they go live.
- Never tell an owner their terms are lawful, fair or enforceable. Fairness under section 62 is assessed on all the circumstances at the time the term was agreed, which is a judgement for a court and a question for the owner's solicitor, and an owner told "this is fine" by a document stops asking the person who could actually tell them.
- Refuse to write a term that excludes liability for a failure to perform the service with reasonable care and skill, a term denying a refund where the venue cancels, or a blanket "no refunds under any circumstances". Those terms are not risky, they are without effect under section 57 and paragraph 4, and printing them teaches staff to refuse refunds that are owed.
- Never copy terms from another venue's website. You cannot see what was negotiated or what has already been complained about, and a term that suits a 2,000 capacity arena is the wrong shape for a forty seat room.
- Never write a term that only appears after payment. A term the buyer met for the first time on the confirmation email is not part of what they agreed to.
- Never assume a chargeback and a refund are the same event. A chargeback is the card scheme deciding and a refund is the venue deciding, and confusing them produces a policy nobody can operate.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor or trade body to check before it is published or relied on. It applies published consumer law to draft terms, lists what must be told to a buyer, and names the terms that would not bind. It is not legal advice and it does not certify that any term is fair or enforceable.

## Built from
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, Schedule 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3134/schedule/2/made, read 16 September 2026: the pre contract information list in step 1 and the duty to say there is no cancellation right in step 2.
- The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, regulation 28, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/3134/regulation/28/made, read 16 September 2026: regulation 28(1)(h), the leisure services on a specified date exemption, which is the whole of step 2.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, Part 1 Chapter 4 (services), https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/part/1/chapter/4, read 16 September 2026: sections 49, 50, 54, 55, 56 and 57 in step 3, including the 14 day refund requirement and the bar on excluding liability.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 62, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/section/62, read 16 September 2026: the fairness test and the consequence that an unfair term does not bind, in step 5.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, Schedule 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/15/schedule/2, read 16 September 2026: paragraphs 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13 and 14, which are the strike list in step 5 and the valid reason requirement in step 7.
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, section 230, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/13/section/230, read 16 September 2026: the definition of total price in step 6.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Unfair commercial practices" (CMA207), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/unfair-commercial-practices-cma207/unfair-commercial-practices, last updated 18 November 2025, read 16 September 2026: the drip pricing prohibition quoted in step 6.

# box-office-terms

## You are given
The event details for one dated event at a UK hospitality business: the trading name, the legal entity name and company or partnership number if there is one, the geographical address, the contact telephone and email, the complaint route, the event date and door time, the headline price, every unavoidable fee with the name of whoever charges it, the total price, the sales channels in use and whether each is at a distance, and the ticketing platform if one is used. The owner's decisions on refunds, transfers, name changes, resale, lateness, age limits, what is included and what happens if the lineup or menu changes. The draft terms themselves, written out in full, each term already numbered. Where the terms will sit, the step in the buying journey at which the buyer sees them, whether acceptance is recorded, and where that record is stored. Any previous version of the terms with its version date. And the judgements already made by Claude: which terms were kept and which were struck, and for each strike the Schedule 2 paragraph or the section of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 cited.

## Produce
Write into a `./box-office-terms-output/` folder:

1. `pre-contract-information.csv` with these columns in this order: `info_ref`, `requirement_name`, `required_by`, `value_supplied_verbatim`, `present`, `where_shown`, `shown_before_payment`. `info_ref` is I001 upward. `required_by` is exactly one of `CCR 2013 Schedule 2`, `DMCCA 2024 section 230`, `owner decision`. `present` and `shown_before_payment` are each `yes` or `no`. One row for each of: trading name, legal entity name, geographical address, telephone, email, total price inclusive of taxes and fees, arrangements for payment, arrangements for performance and the date of performance, complaint handling policy, and the statement that there is no right to cancel.
2. `terms-register.csv` with columns: `term_ref`, `term_heading`, `term_text_verbatim`, `words`, `category`, `decision`, `paragraph_or_section_cited`, `replacement_supplied`, `owner_decision_required`. `term_ref` is T001 upward. `category` is exactly one of `venue cancels or changes`, `customer changes mind`, `customer cannot attend`, `transfer or name change`, `resale`, `price and fees`, `admission and lateness`, `age and identification`, `what is included`, `accessibility`, `behaviour and ejection`, `data and photography`, `other`. `decision` is exactly `kept` or `struck`. Every `struck` row carries a non-empty `paragraph_or_section_cited`.
3. `unfair-terms-test.csv` with columns: `term_ref`, `schedule_2_paragraph`, `paragraph_summary`, `outcome`, `evidence_in_term_verbatim`. One row for every term tested against each of paragraphs 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13 and 14. `outcome` is exactly one of `clear`, `lands on this paragraph`, `not applicable`.
4. `non-excludable-rights.csv` with columns: `right_ref`, `statutory_right`, `section`, `stated_on_page`, `where_stated`, `any_term_conflicting`, `conflicting_term_ref`. One row for each of: service performed with reasonable care and skill, information given treated as a term, right to repeat performance, right to price reduction, refund within 14 days by the original means of payment with no fee, and the bar on excluding liability. `stated_on_page` and `any_term_conflicting` are each `yes` or `no`.
5. `price-consistency.csv` with columns: `channel`, `headline_price_shown`, `fees_added_at_checkout`, `fee_charged_by`, `total_price_shown`, `matches_terms_page`, `point_in_journey_total_first_shown`. One row per sales channel. `matches_terms_page` is `yes` or `no`.
6. `version-log.csv` with columns: `version_date`, `version_ref`, `terms_url_or_location`, `what_changed`, `approved_by`, `first_event_sold_under_this_version`, `acceptance_record_location`. Appended to any existing log, never overwritten.
7. `gaps.md` - a numbered list of: any pre contract information item marked not present or not shown before payment; any absence of the statement that there is no fourteen day cancellation right; any term landing on a Schedule 2 paragraph that was nonetheless kept; any statutory right in `non-excludable-rights.csv` with a conflicting term; any channel whose total price does not match the terms page; any term with no category; any term the owner must still decide; any missing acceptance record location; and any term whose text appears only after payment.

## Rules
- Codex measures, records and checks. It never invents, never rewords the owner's terms, and never makes the judgement that was supplied to it. Terms are recorded exactly as written, including numbering, punctuation and capitalisation.
- Never draft a term, a heading, a policy or a replacement sentence. Where a replacement was supplied by the owner it is recorded verbatim in `replacement_supplied`; where none was supplied that cell is empty and the row is listed in `gaps.md`.
- Never record a term as fair, lawful or enforceable. `unfair-terms-test.csv` records only whether a term lands on a named paragraph of Schedule 2, which is an observation, not a conclusion.
- Never compute or infer a total price. Prices are read as supplied per channel and any mismatch is flagged, not corrected.
- Never merge a chargeback with a refund, and never record a chargeback in a refund column.
- Never write a figure for how many refunds are typical, an industry standard refund window, or any benchmark. No such published figure exists for a single independent venue and none is to appear in any file.
- Never publish the terms, upload them to a website or ticketing platform, or send them to a customer. Every file produced is a draft for a person to check and publish.
- Word counts are counted, not estimated.
- Use British English, GBP and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes in any file you write, and any supplied term containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner's solicitor or trade body to check before it is published or relied on. It applies supplied consumer law to draft terms and is not legal advice and does not certify that any term is fair or enforceable.

## Return
The absolute path of each file written, the row count of each CSV, the count of pre contract information items present and missing with each missing item named, whether the no fourteen day cancellation right statement is present and where it is shown, the number of terms kept and struck with the paragraph or section cited for each strike, every term that lands on a Schedule 2 paragraph and was kept anyway, every non excludable right not stated on the page and every conflicting term found, every sales channel whose total price does not match the terms page with both figures, the current version date and reference from `version-log.csv`, and the `gaps.md` item count.