The last time I attempted that, the venue charged me the TicketMaster prices and fees; according to the staffer with whom I dealt, it was part of the venue’s contract with TicketMaster to sell all of the tickets through them. I didn’t do any research beyond that one purchase, but I assumed that was TicketMaster’s newest anti-competitive weapon in their arsenal.
Well, I suppose after reading the 100th pit thread (or equivalent elsewhere on the internet) where the product being pitted is also advertized, it’s hard for me not to come to the conclusion that those who are surprised by this just aren’t paying attention.
I’ve also encountered Ticketmaster charges when purchasing at the venue. I was reading an article this week about the CEO of TicketMaster trying to change the company’s negative image. Nowhere did he mention having less of a shitstain business plan.
Here (UK), I’m not sure of the exact laws (whether UK or EU), but I think there is some legislation that when you quote a price you have to list all “extras” along with it. Companies obviously skirt and circumvent that as much as they can, but it does seem to be holding the dam back a bit: even exploitative companies like Ryanair show a “price” and “total price” when you search, even if the size of text and search terms do their best to suggest that you only care about the “price” and obviously you don’t care about how much money you blow on random “extra” fees. I seem to recall (?) they were hit with some sort of judgement when EVERY form of payment had an extra fee, on the grounds that what they were claiming wasn’t actually the price – so they got away with that for some time, but not forever…
So it is possible to improve.
I’m not sure about ticketmaster. Everything I’ve heard says they’re awful, although having a semi-competant website reseller is a useful convenience for many venues.
I’m not sure why ticket pricing is so eccentric. I think venues fear bad publicity if they actually charge market rates (or price-segment too much)? And they used to deal with this by setting an average-ish price and letting eager people who camped out for tickets get them, in return for making the event seem more desirable. And now they let the tickets be hoovered up be resellers, so there’s a reasonable list price for the ticket, but no-one can get it, you can only get tickets by second-guessing the ticketmaster system.
And, yes, monopolies are something that tends to happen in capitalism. I view them as a <i>failure</i> of capitalism, and actually useful capitalism as what happens when companies are actually trying to provide better services, rather than simply destroy their competition with the right manouvering, but obviously some people don’t see it like that.
There is an irony there, but it’s not with any individual product or service showing up in a “rant against it” thread. The irony is in the entire keyword placement model.
It leads to the product or service placing ads in forums where they are going to get click-thrus that they have to pay for but won’t lead to a sale. Done by people doing their small part to get back at the company in question.
Like I just did to TicketBastard. Everyone click on their ad. Support the SDMB at TicketBastard’s expense!
Same experience for me as well. Went to the box office and still paid extra fees.
I’d love to see some law that requires airlines to show the TOTAL price, including all fees, when their fares are listed. That’s a related but separate rant.
I kind of like the taxes being shown separately. I like the government not being able to try to hide their revenue raising from the purchaser. Now where it is revenue going actually to the provider, I can get on board.
First of all, it stands to reason that buying tickets electronically costs less than buying them from a human being, just like buying a book from Amazon is cheaper than buying it from a bookstore. At least in theory, buying a ticket through TicketBastard should cost less than buying it at the venue’s box office.
Second, it basically amounts to a bait-and-switch. If I know upfront that those four tickets are going to cost $72 instead of $48, I’m a lot less likely to click over to TicketBastard to attempt to buy them. There may be some excuse for fees that apply to the transaction as a whole, regardless of the number of tickets, because there’s no way to say upfront how much it amounts to per ticket. But the bulk of the fees, it seems, are per-ticket fees.
Third, ISTM that there are workable alternatives to this monopoly state of affairs. A venue could divide its seating up into three or four large chunks, and sell one chunk to TicketBastard, a second chunk to TicketSatan, a third to TicketReamer, and the fourth to TicketTorture. It wouldn’t have to develop its own infrastructure.
This isn’t disaggregation, it’s ripping customers off. Space in the hold of an airplane isn’t a particularly scarce asset, so once you’ve built the plane to not seat passengers down there, that space is free.
You could argue that the added weight of the luggage costs the airlines money in increased fuel costs, but they’re not charging by weight.
The airlines that charge like this are doing it because they can.
I’d love to see a law requiring that there be somewhere (a reasonable somewhere, either within 5 miles of the box office, or online) where one can buy tickets at the list price (plus any applicable taxes, of course).
Ticketmaster? Amateurs. They need to study the new masters of evil ticket selling policy: Churchill Downs.
Starting with requests for the 2012 Derby, you will be charged a $50 administrative fee whether you get tickets or not!
I’m not talking taxes. I’m talking about fees like the baggage fees (for airlines) or the various fees that TM charges, like the processing fee (even when the customer prints his/her own ticket), which are not taxes but fees that the company adds on top of the regular price.
Well the airline can’t really include the baggage charge in the price up front, because they don’t knower if you have a bag or indeed how many.
A very significant part out an air ticket is add ons, but they tend to be taxes.
Well, that’s not true, is it? Until maybe five years ago, the luggage “fee” was part of your ticket price, and it was the same for everyone.
Well obviously. But that wasn’t the context being discussed.
If we were taking about a law banning airlines charging per bag prices, I have to say is oppose that too.
I suggest using a website like Kayak for your plane tickets. Not only can you compare all the airlines/websites in one handy dandy place, but it also gives you a total price, not just the ticket price. For example, a few hours ago I was looking to book a ticket to New Orleans— I saw it said $178 on Kayak (via Orbitz) and was certain that meant the base price and fees would show up at a final screen. But that wasn’t the case at all . . in fact, my total was $177!
So, my point is: that’s an easy way to see what fees are without having to guess.
You can try LiveNation, but they’re not that much better/different. If TicketBastard has the promo contract, you won’t be able to get tickets from LiveNation and vice versa. The last couple shows I went to, I attended because I could get tickets from LiveNation rather than TicketBastard.
While that’s true, in the case of luggage you can at least make the argument that the airline is providing a service by transporting something for you, and it does indeed cost money to carry your bags - not in space, but in fuel. Yes, they’re charging you the same for your 21-pound bag they charged me for my 24-pound bag, but there’s a practical limit to how fine they can slice the issue (and in fact they do charge more for unusually heavy bags, so there is, technically, a weight charge.)
Furthermore, the simple fact is that the price of air travel is lower than it used to be. It bounces up and down but, over time, the trend line has been inexporably downward. When you adjust for inflation, you are not, in fact, paying more to fly. You’re paying less. The airlines aren’t gouging you; they’re restructuring their fares.
And of course, there’s the rather critical point that no airline is a monopoly. If you don’t like Delta charging you for bags, fly United. I know it’s easier to fly one airline or another depending on where you are and where you’re going but there are always options. If charging for bags was that onerous a thing, airlines would compete by offering deals on it. So while its true “They charge you because they can,” they “can” charge anything. They could charge you $1000 for water. They don’t, because while it’s theoretically possible, the competitive nature of air travel keeps their prices down.
I cannot imagine what complaint people could possibly have with airline prices, to be honest. They’re sensationally affordable. I fly to Florida every year, direct, and have never paid a cent more than $250 a seat for a return ticket. That’s the high end price; one year it was $160 a head, with all taxes and fees included. This is from Buffalo-Niagara, not Atlanta. My flight from Toronto to California and back again next week cost me, return, everything in, about five hundred dollars. That’s damn cheap to be transported across the continent and back again. If they hit me up for $6 for a sandwich I frankly don’t really care.
Ticketmaster
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Provides you with nothing you couldn’t have bought when venues sold tickets themselves,
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Inserts themselves into transactions in which they aren’t needed, through openly anticompetitive deals, and
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Charges prices exorbitantly higher than any concievable free market rationalization could justify.
They are simply a flat-out monopoly. How they get away with it I quite honestly don’t understand, and I really have tried to understand it.
The weight charge usually doesn’t kick in until 50 pounds, which is a pretty damned heavy bag, though I certainly push the limit on those rare occasions when I must fly an airline that charges per bag. It would be easier on me if I could break that single 48-pound load into two 25-pound loads (allowing for the second suitcase itself weighing a couple of pounds) but it would cost me an extra $25 each way even though it’s essentially the same load, so I don’t. The Firebug doesn’t get his own suitcase when we must fly such an airline, because I’m just not going to pay $50 so he can have the grownup feeling of pulling his little wheeled suitcase that weighs maybe 8 pounds, fully packed, into the airport. And AFAIAC, any airline that forces me into such a ridiculous choice is run by a bunch of rat bastards.
Now here’s the deal: they could damn well charge by weight if they wanted to, if that was their real motivation.
What do you do, every time you check your bags in? You get to the counter, and you put your suitcases on a scale.
If they wanted to charge for weight, they could ring up your total, right there at the counter, every bit as easily as charging $25 per bag.
Nah, this is just another way of ripping you off because they’re in a position to do so. Fuck 'em.
?
You have seen the electronic scales that have been at the check in counter for 30 years or so haven’t you? They can sell me grapes/lb why not charge for baggage/lb?
FUCK THE PACKERS!!!