My family, one of my daughter’s friends, and I want to go see a San Antonio Rampage hockey game this Sunday. They offer a neat, money-saving package: a ticket with a hot dog and a drink for $12. Such a deal.
My wife went to TicketMaster… err… Bastard to order. Instead of the $48 (plus any understandable sales tax), the total came to over $70. WTF!? A “convenience charge” and an “order processing fee” were going to be added. To Hell with that! I decided to stop by the AT&T Center’s box office this morning to get the tickets instead. (I was going to be in the area, but I wouldn’t tell them that because then they’d think it was “convenient”.)
Gee, lo and behold, the ticket center isn’t open on weekends, except if there’s an event. Normal hours are 8AM - 6PM, which is keeping with the inconvenient theme: the venues in a probable high-crime, industrial area that wouldn’t be worth the time or effort in taking time off from work to go to.
So, back at home, I decide to go to the AT&T Center’s website to order the tickets. It still comes up with a $4 convenience fee, but the total stayed at $65.32 ($48 tickets, $16 convenience, $1.32 additional taxes). Until…
The last of several “confirmation” screens: What’s your name/email? What’s your credit card number? Is that really your credit card number? Are you sure? Really really sure? Each of these was saying my “Subtotal” was $65.32, until the last one, which suddenly tacked on the $6.11 order processing fee. By then, I’d gotten in such a rhythm that I clicked “SUBMIT” automatically. On the confirmation screen, I then saw the new total: $72.43, because [fanfare]: the sale was processed through TicketBastard!
Then to top it off: the tickets I had to print off were a full page each, with lots of black background so that it’d run out my black ink cartridge first.
It’s occurred to me that pitting TicketMaster is a bit like pitting cancer. I can’t think of how anybody could possibly defend either, but everybody knows somebody who has had the displeasure of dealing with it.
TicketMaster is the main reason I don’t go to many sporting events or concerts or shows. I would really, desperately have to want to attend something before I’d give a cent to that company for its inconvenience fees.
I miss the good ol’ days of camping out for tickets. In DC, I camped out for Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Paul McCartney.
Nowadays, tickets are gone in a matter of minutes, due to on-line buying. It just makes it easier for resellers (another particular type of bastard business) to scarf up the entire arena’s worth of tickets. But along the lines of what MwG said, how’re you gonna prevent resellers from doing it?
Lots more people like you, who also make their feelings known to the venues and acts that employ TicketMaster, would make a difference. Failing that, it’s business as usual.
Without cancer, humanity would have long-since overpopulated the world into uninhabitability. It’s a completely necessary evil. Now you go an apologize to cancer right now!
I always wondered about this. The wide spread existence of resellers rather obviously suggests that venues undercharge for tickets. And upping the price would presumably help the venue and the acts bottom line. So why don’t they just up the price until scalping becomes unprofitable?
Because stadiums run on a business model like everyone else: determine where supply meets demand and sell at that price. Scalpers run on a slightly different model: what’s the absolute most I can get any individual buyer to pay for my ticket? Both are obviously trying to sell all the tickets they have in their possession but the scalpers aren’t trying to fill up the stadium, whereas the event is. Sure, you could have the stadium sell every concert ticket for $250 rather than $100 and you’d get rid of scalpers completely. You’d also be left with a ton of tickets left over because demand just plummeted.
The irony isn’t just because the ad showed up. Its because it showed up due to this thread. The stupid ad programs just look for key words. We understand that.
You don’t see the “irony” of me ranting about, lets say, how much Ford trucks suck and this automatically generating buy Ford truck ads? If someone is “sitting here” telling me how much something sucks, getting automatic ads about it ain’t exactly going make me wanna run out and buy me some of that shit.