'2025 melon music awards' has been engulfed in controversy over forced ticket cancellations.
Recently on online communities and social media, numerous posts by ticket buyers claiming their 'MMA 2025 (melon music awards)' tickets were forcibly canceled have surfaced.
One netizen said, "I held the ticket in my hand, but I received a text saying the ticket will be forcibly canceled for abnormal fraudulent booking," and "when I called, they said they absolutely could not tell me why it was considered abnormal access, they won't accept any explanation, and even if I send an explanation they will just cancel it. They also said the account will be suspended for three months. So what am I supposed to do?" expressing frustration.
A screenshot posted alongside contained a notification message received from melon ticket. Melon ticket explained the reason for cancellation as "attempted booking via abnormal route" and notified, "All such bookings will be forcibly canceled. Regardless of voluntary cancellation, your booking has been confirmed as fraudulent booking and the melon ticket ID you used will be restricted from use for 3 months."
Moreover, the notification the netizen received listed the refund amount as '0 won,' drawing attention. Since the 'melon music awards' ticket price was 55,000 won, netizens who saw this reacted, "Are they not even going to refund?"
Immediately after this post went up, other victims in the same situation appeared one after another, and some raised suspicions that "aren't they randomly canceling to reserve seats for invited guests?"
The original poster of the damage report said, "Cancellations were concentrated in certain sections, raising suspicions of reassigning seats for invited guests, lack of an explanation procedure, delayed refunds (or nonrefunds)," and said they plan to collect similar damage materials and report to related agencies such as the Korea Consumer Agency and the Fair Trade Commission.
Meanwhile, melon music awards reiterated that all canceled tickets were "fraudulent bookings." In an official statement they explained, "To protect users and provide stable service, in accordance with melon ticket terms and conditions Article 26 (regulation on fraudulent purchases), booking cancellations were taken for some customers who used the service abnormally (abnormal access and activity)."
Regarding the 'nonrefund' suspicion, they said, "Full refunds have been processed for those fraudulent booking cases. Contrary to some claims that normal bookings were canceled or refunds were not received, that is not true," and emphasized, "We have all related supporting documents, and refunds were fully processed based on supporting materials."
Meanwhile, the melon music awards will be held at Gocheok Sky Dome starting at 5 p.m. on the 20th. The main performance will feature G-DRAGON, Park Jae-beom, 10CM, ZICO, EXO, WOODZ, Jennie, aespa, IVE, HANRORO, BOYNEXTDOOR, RIIZE, PLAVE, NCT WISH, ILLIT, Hearts2Hearts, KiiiKiii, ALLDAY PROJECT, IDID, ALPHA DRIVE ONE and others, and will be broadcast live globally via WAVVE, Japan's U-NEXT, and Germany's MagentaTV.
[photo] Kakao Entertainment
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