I think RTFirefly hit the nail on the head. If all the fees were added in BEFORE they published the ticket price, there would hardly be a bat of an eye. IT is the shock of being told that you need to pay $14.68 for a $10 ticket is when the ill will comes in. If you were told it was a $14.68 ticket, less grumbling and nobody hates them.
Check out www.StubHub.com - rather nice setup. You pick the performer and date, then it gives you a seating map and listing of where the seats are (eg: Section 210, Row D, 2 seats together)
Ticketmaster’s not the only scourge in town. A couple months ago, I bought two tickets for a show directly through a small community theatre. Aside from the $3.75 “convenience” fee for online seat selecting and ordering per ticket, they also charge $2.00 per ticket for US mail in an envelope that arrived bearing a 37¢ meter stamp. I could live with $2.00 per order, but per ticket is excessive. The only way to avoid all of that is to go to the box office (when they’re open, which is usually only a couple hours before any given performance, so you’re waiting in line with people hoping to buy tickets for that day’s show.
OTOH, when the Lion King was in San Francisco two years ago, I was pleasantly surprised at being able to walk to the theater at lunch time, select seats and buy them at the box office with absolutely no up-charges or fees.
You know what my fee makes me boil the most? The order processing fee. Why? Because when you start to buy tickets, they tell you the convience charge, and the facility fee, but not the order processing fee. The order processing fee waits until you fill in your credit card information, pick out a shipping method, and get to checkout. Only then do they tell you about the $2.50 ordering fee. Just seems dishonest to me.
It was Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder made a joke about it while inducting Neil Young into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, saying “some smartass who arranged the tables put our table right next to TicketMaster’s table over here, so I predict a food fight by the end of the evening”
That’s perfectly understandable. Ticketmaster needs to cover its costs, and also needs to make a little profit. Fine. Then charge the actual price of the ticket, rather than saying something is $25, only to tack on another $15-$20 in BS “fees”. This is especially bad when the only way to get tickets is through Ticketmaster. Factor the overhead into the price of the ticket, rather than running a scam and introducing the stupid fees at when someone goes to buy the item. I’m sure there’s some sort of legal wrangling going on so that it isn’t false advertising. Ticketmaster is still slimy, and no better than a bunch of crooks.
Your comment about the stars not being worth what people are paying … that’s probably a different thread. But there is a difference: the market determines how much a performer makes. In the case of Ticketmaster, it is the market.
I can’t find any collaboration on the “ABT” bit, so maybe I misremembered that part of it.
But unless you’re one of the first 3 people you can’t buy tickets because they’ve all been sold to Ticket mASSter
Although that is usually to blame on the slowness of the venue ticket selling people, who can take a minute or two to sell tickets to one person. Four people back in the line ends up being an eternity compared to the phone or internet.
Instead of using Ticketmaster or driving to the venue, I have bought many tickets by calling the venue box office and purchasing the ticket in that manner. I bought a pair of tickets to an Aerosmith concert a few weeks ago, I called the Tacoma Dome box office, placed my order and received the tickets in the mail 4 days later. The pair of $37.50 tickets cost me $77, the extra 2 dollars was for some kind of tax. They even paid the postage.