Face to face with a modern horror

[missroserose]

I'd heard in the past, in much the same way one hears urban legends regarding missing kidneys and ice baths, that Ticketmaster charges completely unreasonable fees for their services in helping you procure a ticket to the live event of your choice.  The tales, while good for the occasional sleepover scare, never left me with more than a vague chill at the base of my spine - after all, large-scale live events were a rarity in Juneau, and those requiring Ticketmaster's services completely unknown. 

Suddenly, however, I find myself in a situation where I might actually wish to purchase tickets to a live event!  Hesitantly, I type in Ticketmaster's address, and navigate through the surprisingly easy-to-use interface, and select the seats I wish to purchase.

Then we get to the checkout page.

$41.50 x 2 tickets, base price.  (This was expected, obviously.)
$2.00 x 2 tickets, "facility charge".  (All right, the venue wants a cut, fine.)
$8.40 x 2 tickets, "convenience fee".  (WTF?!)

$103.80 for two tickets that were *supposed* to be $83.  Note the more-than-20%-markup.

But they're not done.  Oh, no.

Scrolling down to the "shipping" options, I see (placed first and highlighted) their "Most convenient delivery option:  Print your tickets whenever you want!".  For an additional $2.50.  Following that are various physical shipment options, all involving UPS and none less than $10 (for a couple of slips of paper?!), and then finally, at the very bottom, "Will call" (which requires the original purchaser holding the credit card used for the purchase and a government-issued ID) for no extra charge.

It gets better.

Scroll down further, and they offer the "opportunity" to make a donation to St. Jude's Children's Hospital, conveniently packaged with your Ticketmaster purchase.  Because Ticketmaster is such a generous institution, that they even offer a "Yes! Please send the more-than-one-fifth-of-my-ticket-price-that's-not-paying-for-the-actual-ticket to help those poor bald children in the cancer ward!"  No, wait, they don't, because that would actually require some sacrifice on their part.  As it is, they can claim altruistic intentions (prominently advertised is the claim that "100% of your donation goes directly to their program!"  That's, like, your whole donation!  And it all goes to the place you're supposedly donating to!) without putting forward one whit of effort.

Thank you, Ticketmaster.  You've made a believer of me.  I'll be doubly thankful the next time I'm traveling on business and someone offers to buy me a drink.

Comments

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

I hear more and more venues are selling tickets online themselves, and cutting out Ticketmaster.

One can only hope.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case here - you can get tickets at the music hall itself, but that'd require an additional three-hour drive (and half-tank of gas) on our part. It doesn't surprise me, really - Ticketmaster is a pain for consumers, but they have the advantage of being first on the scene, and therefore have the most effective means of managing issues like overwhelming demand and scalpers and whatnot. So from the venue's point of view, outsourcing is the way to go.

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

There is (usually) one other "shipping" option that's free, provided you're purchasing the tickets far enough in advance, and that's having it regular-mailed to you at the billing address on the credit card.

It's not horribly inconvenient (despite the fact that my credit card billing address is a PO Box I have to actually go check, and TM won't guarantee anything more than 48-hours before the event the tickets are for), but I do find it tremendously odd that they'll mail the tickets for free (incurring postage costs for them) but charge me $2.50 to print them out myself.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

It is odd, but it's consistent with their business strategy - the whole model is based on charging you for the convenience, so of course they're going to charge for the most convenient option. I'm going to guess they don't charge the venue anything for their services, which makes venues eager to sign up with them (as opposed to having to license/code their own online ticketing system), and if the customer doesn't feel like making the drive to the physical location they pretty much don't have a choice.

[jamesd.livejournal.com]

They subsidised physical resellers with low service prices to develop a broad distribution network. Then they used that leverage of broad distribution and paid venues for exclusive sale rights on long-term contracts. That gradually created the near-monopoly that there is today.

Creating a web site to sell seats is not so tough compared to getting out of a contract that provides a nice revenue stream and offloads work. For venues the internet's ease of communication effect makes it relatively easy now to sell direct to consumers, something that used to be considerably harder.

[joyfulleigh.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Snopes confirms that Ticketmaster is indeed highway robbery.

L.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

We should totally submit that as an urban legend. :)

[errant-variable.livejournal.com]

"True", calling it now.