So I’m hanging out in Madison, WI this week looking for new apartments. I’m in the process of trying to move out here and I’m trying to get it done by the end of June. Anyway, as I’m hanging out one evening reading the Onion, my GF points out this advertisement in the AV Club section that is listingRage Against the Machine and Queens of the Stone Age are playing at Alpine Valley on August 24, which is right around my birthday.
Luckily tickets hadn’t gone on sale yet and weren’t going to until this morning. So I start getting all excited thinking “Sweet! I finally get to see RATM, a band I’d loved since high school! I make enough money now that I don’t think I’ll have a hard time managing to squeeze the $130 it should cost for tickets.”
So this morning, I wake up at 9:45 and get to the computer and start refreshing the TicketMaster website. 10 AM finally rolls around and I click the ‘best available’ option. After waiting 2 minutes, I finally get in and have the best available lawn/GA tickets. Why did I have to wait 2 minutes to find the best GA? Annoying.
Anyway, I finally get to the purchase page and the total price for two tickets for a $57 show is $153. WTF TicketMaster?! Why do you take something that should be as simple or fun as buying a ticket to a band that I love and turn it into some sort of moral quandry?
BTW, if you don’t want to do the math, that’s $39 in ‘convenience’ fees.
I understand that you want to make money TM, I really do. However, please keep it within reason. Heck, just reach an agreement with the venue and hide from me how much you’re gouging me for. Don’t flaunt your annoying monopoly in my face by throwing on ridiculous bullshit charges like this.
I love how in every other industry, the internet introduces cost savings and increased savings and efficiencies but somehow ticketmaster is charging me more money because I’m printing these things out at home!
I wish I didn’t care. I wish I could just ignore it. I wish I could just see Rage and Queens of the Stone Age. Now I won’t though because I’d just sit around being pissed about it every time I thought about my ticket and how much I paid for it. What was supposed to be a fun purchase this morning has turned into a moral quandary. It’s an effin’ rock show, that shouldn’t be how it goes.
June 16th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I think you know better than to get me started on this topic.
Instead I’ll just enthuse about posts three days in a row!
Yay us! Oh, and sorry for disappearing for so long…
June 16th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
The difference is that nacho dude gets to actually go to the show, instead of inventing some scheme that will both ruin our friendship and keep us from going to the show. Not talking about fulsome.*
*yes I am.
Two dollars is too much for the fulsome.
June 16th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Hmm, one of us is reading this differently than the other…
I read it that the tickets were not actually purchased due to the immense pain that it would cause. If this is incorrect, then I applaud your tolerance to pain, dEn!
June 16th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
I’m sure previous tickets were purchased and enjoyed.
June 17th, 2007 at 8:53 am
There’s a limit to how much I’m willing to pay in service charges. I’d say 5-15% may be acceptable. Even then, I don’t see why more expensive tickets have a higher charge. It’s not like they’re ‘more difficult’ to handle than the other ones.
The whole system makes me very angry. I’d say almost Fulsome level angry I’d guess.
June 18th, 2007 at 6:09 am
The wonders of American Capitalism.
Makes me wonder if the Romans bitched about service charges to see Christians eaten.
Recently bought tickets from Ticketbastard for a local show, 300 seat club. ^ dollar service charge, mailed tix. So that should be a low baseline for service charges: small number of tickets, limited distribution, no special handling. TM still made $1800. Reasonable, i guess, even if the face value of tickets was only $25.
But as dEn says, there’s no reason it should be more for more expensive shows; in fact, as the number of tickets go UP, it should become cheaper.
So, it seems apparent that Ticketmaster is engaging in unscropulous and bastardissimous behavior. Q.E.D. Have them drawn and quintiled!
June 18th, 2007 at 7:11 am
This is exactly why I hate the 930 Club. I paid 10 dollars each for three tickets to the Air Guitar show and paid $10.50 in ‘convenience’ fees. Fuck you Ticketmaster!
June 18th, 2007 at 9:54 am
I so agree. This has exactly happened to me so many times.
June 18th, 2007 at 11:22 am
That’s why, instead, I prefer to ruin PP’s day by not buying the tickets and watching him suffer. I’ll go do other fun things; he’ll mope around and play with radioactive kittens or something.
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:38 am
I remember when TM was the best thing EVAH!! For 2 bucks, you didn’t have to stand in line, road trip to the stadium to buy tickets, or find some dude old enough to drive. Now they grab the cajones (literal or figurative) and twist. Good thing I am too damn old to actually leave the house anymore.
June 22nd, 2007 at 12:44 pm
I go to really lengthy efforts to get to a box office whenever possible to avoid the service fees, even if it means possibly not getting tickets to a sold out show. Lately, this approach has been unfeasible, as there is no alternate to online purchase. I think that’s what is evil. A convenience fee seems ethical when it is for convenience. When there is no choice, it’s called a tax. I thought Americans were against paying taxes. Hmmm.