Ticketmaster has always been a despicable nuisance in the past, but at least they used to just lie to you about how much something cost. The implicit value of their service is that they act as the middleman. Instead of me having to go all the way to the box office, I can simply call TM and they’ll get me the tickets over the phone, without me even having to wait in line. Now that’s a useful service! But they have to get paid, cause…
They need to have ticket stock, for printing my tickets
They need somewhere to store my tickets
They need to ship me my tickets
They need operators who can sell them to me
They need a computer system that will keep track of ticket sales
Of course, none of that stuff cost anywhere near as much as they like to pretend, but we’ll let that slide for now, because their new fee is the absolute icing on this putrid cake. For, you see, by allowing us to spend our own money on our own paper, with our own printer ink to print our own tickets, they have saved themselves the cost of the ticket stock, the cost of printing, the cost of the storage and the costs of shipping. Since much of their sales are done online now, their operator fees are greatly reduced as well. And how do they repay you, the gentle consumer, for saving them all that money? They charge you an extra $2.50 per ticket.
And, as pointed out earlier, if you attempt to avoid all this by just getting in your car and driving down to the venue, you may find out that you still have to pay Ticketmaster anyway. Bastards.
I’ve never been charged to have them mailed to me or to pick them up at the box office. All the other options have a cost but those two always show up as free for me.
So you’re losing it because Ticketmaster is forcing you to use your own supplies while charging you for it… but then you say
If there is a fee for all of them, why did seeing a new way to get the ticket make you lose it? You go crazy when there’s another delivery option? If you don’t like it, don’t use it.
well I didn’t say they charge for all of them, pbbth did, I was just ranting about Ticketmaster charging to e-mail me a link at for $2.50 when not only am I going to have to print it my self, but I supplied them with the e-mail address also.
Ticketmaster also lists this option first on the shipping menu with the title of ticketfast: NOW and they recommend it. The next four options are even more expensive. The free shipping is fifth on the list.
You’ll be really excited when the Ticketmaster spam starts coming in about a week. Did you read their terms of serivce?
I just went through this same experience and had pretty much the same reaction, especially to the ticket printing. I felt like Wonko the Sane finding the instructions on the box of toothpicks.
I guess I don’t see why that would set you off, since you can indeed do free shipping. I understand why every other Ticketmaster fees would set you off, but not that one!
Well, I knew I was going to get bent over on the other fees, and I want to see John Prine. The fee for printing the ticket was one I haven’t seen.
I haven’t bought tickets through them in a long time and it struck me as wrong. Since when going through the process, Ticketmaster recommended it to me as the safest option.
Because the contracts are long-term.
Because the contracts are often negotiated with easily bribed city officials.
Because TicketBastard and their corporate partners often have the contract to manage the venue (see: Kansas City’s Sprint Center).
A good friend of mine was the CFO for Capital Tickets in Kansas City. They got bought out by TicketMaster and she is very familiar with their methods. They are, in her opinion, slightly less ethical then the Mafia.
Tickets could be sold for a venue exclusively via a web interface, profitably, for $1 a ticket. But TicketBastard has cocooned themselves into control of the ticketing for nearly every venue in the US and it looks like we’re going to be stuck with them for years to come.
My approach is to constantly find new, interesting artists. All the best shows I’ve sen have cost less than $20 and were bought at the venue.
Much as I hate Ticketmaster, I was trying to get tickets to the Springsteen show in Pittsburgh. I tried for about 45 minutes on Ticketmaster’s site, getting nothing but errors. Then I was redirected to TicketsNow where I could buy tickets for three or four times their face value.
Actual fans have almost zero chance of getting a ticket at face value because TicketsNow (owned by Ticketmaster) and other scalpers get them all within a minute of them going on sale.
If people would not buy the tickets from the scalpers, this practice would have to end. But it’s not going to happen, because there are people willing to pay 1500$ for one ticket to the Springsteen show, plus fees.
I’m bouncing this thread to add that in addition to the congressman asking the FTC to investigate, a class action suit has been launched in Toronto, Canada.
Thanks gaffa. The venues seem to have most of the blame for this market failure, because of bad/corrupt management. Along with Ticketmaster’s ethically loose practices.
This is the basis for the Canadian class action suit. TicketsNow is operates in a way that is in violation of Ontario’s Ticket Speculation Act, which makes it illegal to sell tickets for more than face value. Their own quarterly report mentions this, as reported in the globe and Mail,
Given that they are putting their own tickets on the site they own, it should be easy enough to put a cap on the price so that it does not exceed face value. How hard could that possibly be? But they choose not to.
