Unbelievable Ticketmaster fees!
 

Just went online to buy two tickets to the Wilco show in Boston on June 8. The tickets were $30 face value, and I purchased two. I had the tickets shipped via USPS, so there's no charge for shipping or TicketFast.

Total for two tickets, with their fees tacked on, was $94.25. $34.25 in fees. More than the price of a ticket. I thought I was a free-market guy until tonight. Ticketmaster is a monopoly and needs to be broken.

cheers,

-the Jesus

I bought tickets to Morrissey here in Dallas and the tickets face value was $39.50, total for 2 tickets was $79.00 and my ultimate total was $106. That is completely ridiculous.

write to your state representative

I agree...I manage a TicketMaster outfit as part of my job and there was some shows where I am simply ashamed to read off what TicketMaster considers a fair charge. I feel like I am ripping off my customers.

No doubt about it. I've balked at a concert or two because of the outrageous fees, and that's not even including the price of parking at the arena (I'm able to park at the mall across the street).

The high fees definitely affect my decision to go to shows these days. In addition to ever-increasing ticket prices, the fees are growing at an even faster rate. I used to think $5 was a high fee for a $40 ticket and now it is that same amount of fee for a $12 ticket. A $50 face value ticket now has about $15 tacked on. No thanks.

But it isn't going to stop as long as people keep paying it. Demand rules the industry and there are always going to be kids with disposable income and yuppies who will gladly blow $250 to see The Police or the Stones.

I was going to see a Henry Rollins spoken word show a couple years back... until I went to get my tickets and Ticketmaster's service charge was almost as much as the ticket itself.

When the service charge for one ticket is pretty much paying the complete day's wage for the brain-dead drone behind the counter, something is wrong.

I just took a look at my pile of old concert tickets... what happened to the good old days?

Kiss reunion show, June 28 1996. Ticket price $35, service charge $3.75.

Better yet...

Van Halen's Monsters of Rock, June 18 1988. Ticket price $25, service charge $2.50

4 pack of tickets for John Mayer is $99. After all the fees, it comes to $141.85 -eek-.

I paid like $45 for my Mayer tix, I guess your venue is cheaper...

TM is really awful. Sometimes I go down to the venue itself and buy tix, but even that's becoming harder. TM sucks.

I should note that's for lawn seating at an outdoor ampitheater here.

I just tried to get 2 tickets to see DJ Shadow and there was a $20 service charge, at this point, I think I'll just try to get tickets off of craigslist or ebay. I won't be using ticketmaster again.

I agree that it has gotten pretty insane. I don't want to give away too much, but I am very involved with the live entertainment business and feel I should post this info from the Ticketmaster wikipedia page:
Few know or care about this, but it's true. They don't take 100% of the "fees" and pretty much are the bad guy in this whole situation. It's a tough spot to be in and it seems like the fee % is getting worse and worse by the year.

That's interesting, PJ. It makes sense why the fees fluctuate so much, when the tickets I buy have roughly the same prices.

It still doesn't make me happy, though.

Soooo shouldn't Eddie V and the girls in Pearl Jam have known this? Why did they make such a stink naming Ticketmaster as the Top Monster in the high Ticket Pricing? Why didn't they just say that Promoters and other <i>sometimes</i> force TM into these horrible ticket pricing situations?

there is a thread like this every so often. i started one several years ago, and then the fees were ONLY like 20 bucks or something haha. fuck tm.

It seems to me that more venues are moving away from Ticketmaster. The last couple out of town shows I've been too were at venues that had direct ticket ordering set up through their websites, with service fees of just a couple bucks per order. I all but refuse to order from Ticketmaster, due to their absurd fees.

And to add insult to injury--if you want to make sure you get your tickets, and print them yourself instantly-there's a 2.50 charge. Your printer, your paper, your bandwidth, they charge you.
Yeah, these fees suck. There have definitely been events I haven't gone to because of the seemingly rapacious fees.

even tickets.com are utter douches when it comes to additional fees.

No use. If there's one good thing Pearl Jam has ever done, it was to go after TicketMaster and their outrageous fees.

They lost.

You can usually bypass the fees by buying the tickets directly from the venue itself, rather than going to a Ticketmaster outlet.

I used to do that on a regular basis in the 80's when I was a kid with no responsibilities. Get a couple friends for company, pile into the car for a 45 minute drive to the venue to get our tix. With all the people I was buying tix for splitting the cost of gas money, we spent less than the service charge (and also usually got better seats). Since I didn't have any responsibilities outside of school, it wans't like I was putting something important on hold to go get them, and instead we'd make a day of hanging out in a different city and having fun.

That's actually interesting to see. So from '88-'96 there was a $1.25 bump. But from '96-'07 you go from $3.50 to around $10-$15 per ticket. Quite a jump.

I personally quit going to shows because of the high fees. Haven't been to a concert in a couple years.

I remember when you could just drop buy the record store/head shop. All the tickets were pre-printed and they would have a big stack of them with a rubber band around them. Service charge was .25. This was the big arena shows.

nowadays it's called: corporate greed and profit (I call it asshole-ism)

Yeah, so what else is new? It's like paying a +30% sales tax instead of the typical 8%-9%.

And sometimes these box offices at the venues have odd hours of operation or are not open daily if you want to go that route and avoid TM charges, which pretty much eliminates that option for working folks.