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No one likes Ticketmaster. No one wants to come to Ticketmaster's keg party, and no one wants to sit at its lunch table. (Would you want to hang around someone who's constantly pawning dozens of dollars off of you for "convenience fees"? Hell, no.)
Apparently, Ticketmaster is tired of having its proverbial car keyed in the high school parking lot. The company has started a blog explaining why they're not ripping you off. (Or, rather, why they're still going to rip you off, price-wise, but they'll be more up front about it this time.) It's called Ticketology, and it begins with this line: "We get it -- you don't like service fees." Right-o, Ticketmaster. We don't. But, look, change!
This practice changes today. Over the next few days we are rolling out a new way of presenting pricing and fees on Ticketmaster.com. Going forward, just like almost every other business in the world, we'll tell you up front how much you can expect to pay for a certain ticket.
In the scheme of fee-driven rants, the blogosphere has been
blowing up with plenty of fiery diatribes aimed at airlines' excessive fee-mongering. This includes baggage charges, flight-changing charges, eliminating free standby travel, and simple booking charges.
You can even fork out the cash for nicer seats -- in coach. Yuck. (Look,
here's a chart showing the myriad of fees you can expect to encounter on a given airline.)
Ticketmaster is now claiming that they're going to be more "up front" with ticket charges; but is this really much different than the way that airlines are gouging customers? Airlines aren't hiding the fact that they're charging customers for necessary processes in order to board a flight. (You'll notice this when they ask for your credit card when you book your flight, when you check in, and when you're laid over and just want to get home, dammit.)
Now, Ticketmaster isn't hiding its fees, either -- but that doesn't mean that they're being any more fair.
In the world of airlines, there remains one shining beacon of light: Southwest Airlines, who refuse to participate in baggage fees, booking fees, or fees to change a flight. So, where's our concert ticket equivalent?
Here are some tips:
Buy directly from the venue. For smaller venues in town -- or, rather, not the Sprint Center -- this will save you dollars.
Buy from a re-seller. Occasionally,
Stubhub or
Craigslist will offer tickets at cheaper prices, especially for last-minute shows.
Buy from a Ticketmaster retail location. If you must succumb to Ticketmaster, heading to a
Ticketmaster retail location will save you the infamously loathed TicketFast fee, which costs, bizarrely, $2.50 to print the ticket with your own printer.
