Ticket rip off

[solmisation]

I went to book tickets for the upcoming Stranglers tour, the ticket price is £23, ticket price with booking fee £26.25, so £3.25 per ticket booking fee. To top it all off there is a £4.95 transaction fee. I think I'll just look out some old Cd's and listen to them instead.

 

[ChrisKH]

With the added bonus of the strippers...
Or was that another show?

I paid £7.50 to see The Stranglers in 1978 in Battersea Park.

I think I'm showing my age now.

 

[swee'pea99]

Stinks dunnit? 'Booking fees' drive me nuts...seems to me like someone charging you an entrance fee to come in their shop and buy stuff. Why do they bother? Ticket price £23, booking fee £3.25..why don't they just tell it like it is: tickets £26.25? Grrrrrr!

 

[Paulus]

Mrs P has wanted for years to see Rod Stewart. She and a college mate saw him in 1978, so for her 50th birthday I splashed out on a couple of tickets at the O2 for next May. The cheap tickets had gone (£60). So I booked a couple of near the front seats and the bill came to £130 each. Teach me to go to the pub first and then get on the Internet!

 

[upsidedown]

With the added bonus of the strippers...
Or was that another show?

I paid £7.50 to see The Stranglers in 1978 in Battersea Park.

I think I'm showing my age now.

I remember seeing a film of The Stranglers at an oudoor gig with naked dancers doing Nice n Sleazy when i was a kid, looked great.

 

[upsidedown]

Mrs P has wanted for years to see Rod Stewart. She and a college mate saw him in 1978, so for her 50th birthday I splashed out on a couple of tickets at the O2 for next May. The cheap tickets had gone (£60). So I booked a couple of near the front seats and the bill came to £130 each. Teach me to go to the pub first and then get on the Internet!

I did the same for Bon bleedin' Jovi, £250 for 2 seats at the O2 in London to listen to that pompous load of old toss.
Still, got my own back by taking her to see Otis Gibbs and Billy Bragg at Wolves Civic.

 

[Over The Hill]

So the reason they charge so much seems to be that they get enough people to pay so much!

Me, I pay £3.00 to see the band in my local pub but get a free pint of Guinness.

 

[Dan B]

Face price: what the agency paid for the ticket
[*]
Booking fee: what pays for their staff, premises, IT systems, credit card transaction fees, ...

If you don't like it, buy direct from the venue. If you can, because many venues have realised that running a box office is actually quite expensive (probably for all the above reasons) and would rather not deal with the public direct

There's a case for rejigging the way prices are presented so that the agency margin is inside the face price not outside it, but until that happens the booking fee is not going away


[*] actually it's worse than that. See e.g. http://www.authoritytickets.com/?p=128