This past weekend we took the wee one to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live. The show itself is a post on it's own, but until then...here is today's rant.
Ticket prices for this event ranged from quite reasonable to I don't think so. We decided to go with the reasonable $17 tickets since she won't remember this show, she isn't even 2, and I didn't want to pay $99 to see YGG.
Anyway, so for a live show, it was $51 for three tickets. Not bad in my books, especially for a once a year type outing.
Thanks to Ticketmaster however...your final price is never the ticket price.
Here's a breakdown (why they send you a receipt with the actual breakdown is beyond me, since it makes me never want to purchase a ticket from them again):
- total face value $51
- facility charge $6
- subtotal $57
- "convenience" charge $18.75 (I added the quotation marks)
- convenience charge tax $1.47
- order processing $6.08
- total charge $83.30
Yes, there were almost as many fees as the total ticket charge. And why is it a convenience charge? It's not convenient to me. Perhaps if they only charged it for online purchases, but seeing as they charge you even if you buy your tickets at the actual box office, it's definitely not a convenience! OK, I get that it's only a convenience charge for Ticketmaster, so why not call it something else then, like "I can charge as high of, and as many, fees as I want because this is the only place you can buy these tickets" fees. Sounds a little more truthful to me, and people would still buy the tickets, because they are right - they are the only place I can buy tickets.
Thankfully they had some American Express deal in place, so I was able to use our rewards points to pay for half (which basically paid for the fees) of the price, so it wasn't too much out of the wallet.
It was all worth it, but when I got the receipt in the mail it just made me laugh and shake my head a little. Oh well. I am sure next time YGG rolls through town we will do it all again, convenience fees or not!
2 comments:
I HATE ticketmaster. I've been wating for someone smarter than me to have the balls and the brains to bring some sort of class action lawsuit against those jerks... there's gota be some sort of anti-trust business going on there.
I have complete empathy.
(and we're a big YGG house. Jack thinks is's the business.)
I can't stand those fees. If they want to charge all that junk, just raise the price of the ticket for goodness sakes! I hate thinking I'm getting one thing, and end up paying much more. For Disney on Ice, I ended up having my dad go to the events center so we could get our tickets for $6.50 instead of $6.50 plus $5 of fees per ticket! (Ok, I don't remember the actual price of the fees, but it was almost the price of the ticket.) When you're buying 20 tickets, it's huge!
Post a Comment