An Inconvenient Charge

Valerae
Mar 28, 2008 at 10:29 AM
18 comments

Section Row Seat Price Conv. Fee Date Performance

SEC 7 Q 1 $49.50 $18.95 June 20, 2008 Iron Maiden
SEC 7 Q 2 $49.50 $18.95 June 20, 2008 Iron Maiden

Delivery Fee: $0.00
Order Fee: $5.15
Total Ticket Price: $142.05

What the hell was I just charged for? How on earth can a "convenience fee" cost nearly half as much as the ticket? It wasn't even until I was at the last page of my order before I saw we would be hit with that charge. I know it will be the best show ever, but right now, my ass hurts.

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Can I Play With Madness?

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ouch! yeah, I like how they wait until the end to stick you with the convenience charge. I wish they'd just state up front how much the tickets were going to be.

[this bites]

Nice, it's like you're paying for 3 tickets!

WTF? That's stoopid.

"convenience fee"

Who exactly is that convenient for?

Well, you see the convenience fee covers the cost of proving paper tickets in stead of admission passes carved on slabs of granite! Asshats.

The funny thing about TM is that if you choose the TicketFast option of printing your tickets at home, they charge you an additional $2.50...to use your paper, and your ink.

grrrrr that pisses me off, I've encountered that too. it must cost them so much to send you an email with your little personal bar code or whatever.

LOL @ carved on granite slabs!

You're paying for the convenience of using their service, which is the only service you can use, so it's your convenience.

Again, why not just state the tickets are - $68.45 which includes a $49.50 for the artist and $18.95 for TM and the venue, etc. I'd be more okay with that. Better than "oh, tickets are $49.50, then shite another $20 more per ticket, wtf?"

Redzilla replied to Red Mosquito’s comment:
Mar 28, 2008
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Yup, it's the shite! factor they're trying to avoid. Tricksy fuckers.

Last summer I went online to buy tickets to the art gallery for me, my mother, and my aunt. The tickets were something like $12 or $15. So that's about $45 plus taxes. Suddenly, at the checkout, there's an additional $33! Turns out that to order by internet, there is an additional charge of $11 per ticket. Ummm, why on Earth would I practically double our price just to be able to pick my tickets up at the gallery? We just made a point of going as soon as the gallery opened and paid *just* the ticket price. I might have been willing to pay one fee for all three, since it was one transaction (maybe), but per ticket? Right.

That's why I like StubHub and other secondary outlets that charge the seller, and plainly state that they're going to take a 10% profit. The market determines the price and everyone is happy. Not to mention, you don't have to deal with the incredibly user-unfriendly interface that TM employs..

That's really convenient! I was buying Gwen Stefani tickets and saw the $9 charge for each (which I thought was high). I also thought about standing in line and NOT getting tickets because the lady in front of me couldn't make her mind up fast enough, so then it seemed okay. Plus with gas prices, blah, blah, blah.

But still $18.95 is crazy high. It's funny that hotels charge less when you book on the internet to order but tickets are cheaper in person. That sucks!

Speaking of TM interfaces - the last time I ordered tickets I got a phone call during the "You have absolutely NO MORE THAN 2 MINUTES TO DO THIS!" so I get through the call and had to start again. No lie - I got to the same point and the phone rang AGAIN. Ugh. It was like I was on that Distraction game show.

For the record, this outrageous fee was charged by Live Nation. My first, and hopefully last, experience with them.

They just as bad, if not worse.

"Under the new ticketing plan, Live Nation expects to sell more than 20 million tickets annually and will begin dynamically pricing those tickets so that it can recoup more of the revenues it believes it loses after brokers resell those tickets."

Wait, so they want in on scalper action? Jesus Christ they're already taking us to the cleaners with normal ticket prices. So they apparently see the profits that scalpers make as being lost revenue? That is just fucked up beyond words. Do you think we could get some cops to arrest Live Nation executives for scalping?????? Oh, that makes me MAD!!! So mad, I just used my John Cleese voice (even though you can't hear it). Fucked up, I say.

[this is good]

shocking.
And sucky.

sister got fisted!

how annoying. sorry to see this. just show's how die-hard you are if you ask me. =)

An Inconvenient Charge

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