September 27, 2005

Speak Out Against The Madness

I haven't purchased tickets to a concert in a long time and things have changed a lot since the last time I did. Last year Debra bought our tickets to the BSC but this year I took care of it. I went to ticketmaster and found our tickets were priced at $39.95. (BTW, who are the crazy people who really believe 39.95 is a lot less than $40.00 so that merchants continue to use the .95 to avoid the easier even dollar figures). But $39.95 or $40.00 I still am willing to pay it for 6 hours in the sun listening to good music with BFD. So I selected my tickets, put them in my cart and went to checkout. There I discovered a $9.95 convenience fee PER TICKET!. Convenient for whom? I don't get it. Why not just roll the money into the ticket price? Calling it a convenience fee is just an insult. I was still willing to pay the 49.90 for the day so I accepted. Then I had to pay "shipping" fees of $2.50 per ticket so ticketmaster would email the tickets to me. Geez. When will the madness end? I suppose not until everyone stops buying tickets. So I guess I'm partly responsible for the madness. Sorry.

Posted by susan at September 27, 2005 04:56 PM
Comments

Yes, buying concert tickets is very aggrevating. I don't know why they don't just include it in the ticket price, either. Very tricky.

Posted by: JennySmith at September 28, 2005 06:55 AM

This is not exactly related, but the charge for emailing your tickets reminded me:
My company uses ADP for payroll processing. ADP sends massive paper reports every payroll. You can get them on CD instead for an extra charge (something like $5/payroll). You get no credit for eliminating the paper reports. "Those are included in the base fee." Let's see, the cost of materials and printing and shipping paper versus the cost of a CD... yeah, $0 to $5 seems about right....in BIZARRO world!

Posted by: John at September 28, 2005 09:34 AM

I hate ticketmaster, but you should get your tickets mailed to you because then:
1. you get a real ticket stub
2. there is no fee.

Posted by: Deb at September 28, 2005 02:58 PM

Oh well, too late. Next time I'll pay better attention. It seemed to me there was a charge for everything and 2.50 was the cheapest.

Posted by: susan at September 28, 2005 04:07 PM

Yep, too late, but next time look for the "standard shipping option." : )

Posted by: deb at September 29, 2005 08:43 AM