Inconvenience Charges And Ridiculous Fees
Written: Aug 13 '01
| Customer Service: |
 |
|
| Selection: |
 |
|
The Bottom Line
Ticketmaster Online provides a service that anyone else could provide, yet it charges ridiculous fees and is rude to its customers. Why? Because it can.
|
| Full Review |
Introduction
While I agree with the members who recommend ticketmaster.com -- that it's fast, easy, etc. -- I truly despise ticketmaster and ticketmaster.com. The fees they charge are ridiculous, the customer service is practically non-existent, and the corporation has almost a complete monopoly on ticket-selling services in this country; ticketmaster just makes that monopoly all the more encompassing.
My Recent Experiences with Ticketmaster.com
Since I find ticketmaster fees ridiculous, I avoid the service as much as I possibly can. Recently, I wanted to buy tickets to see my hometown baseball team. I went to the team's website, found the tickets page, and on it were two links and phone numbers. One link said "ticketmaster," and the other one said something like "purchase tickets from the Field." Of course I clicked the latter link because it seemed to be the one that was in no way involved with ticketmaster. Whew! When the page loaded up, however, it was none other than ticketmaster.com. Feeling this must be a mistake, I called the phone number for my team. The person who picked up the phone, after I had dialed the "team number" said one word, "Ticketmaster." My worst nightmare was true. There was absolutely no way to avoid these people. So, I slapped down twenty dollars for the ticket, plus another ten or so in "convenience charges" and "misc. fees." I found out the only way to avoid these ridiculous charges is to purchase season tickets to the Field, so that is what I did ... happy, because I would no longer be dealing with ticketmaster ... right? Not a chance.
My favorite band is on tour, and new dates were popping up on their website every day. Us nerds who were watching the fan page got a special deal -- we could purchase tickets from the fan site before anyone else would have the option to do so. When the date for the show I wanted finally popped up on the fan site I instantly clicked the link. Blast! It went straight to ticketmaster.com and I had to pay even more ridiculous fees! This time there were shipping options, not one of them which was below thirteen dollars . For two tiny pieces of paper?! Give me a break. I selected "Will Call" and I hope that my tickets are at the show when I arrive, but having dealt with ticketmaster.com I wouldn't be too surprised if the tickets were nowhere to be found ... along with my "convenience charges" and "misc. fees"
Is There Another Option?
No, not really. Being interested in the law, I checked out to see what kind of laws I could accuse ticketmaster/ticketmaster.com of violating. I was not surprised to find out that several people have taken ticketmaster to court, but in every instance the case was thrown out. Why? A third-party buyer (what we are) cannot sue ticketmaster, because we purchase tickets, be it online or over the phone, through ticketmaster, but we are buying the tickets for an event that someone else is sponsoring. Therefore, we, as the consumers, are indirect buyers. If you follow me so far, what this means is that the event sponsor and ticketmaster could actually get together and charge as much as they want for tickets, and us, the indirect buyers, would have no recourse. And we wonder why their customer service is so bad! They don't have to care about to us, so they don't. It is sad but true.
Conclusions
Although I am obviously frustrated with ticketmaster.com, I still get to see my favorite bands in concert and my favorite teams hit the field. There are only a few ways to get around ticketmaster.com, and I often find myself scanning auction sites to get the tickets that I want ... without the fees. I do realize that ticketmaster.com provides a service to its customers, and of course all services must come with some charge. I just find that with the increased popularity of each show, ticketmaster.com's fees get higher and higher. This makes little sense to me, because all ticketmaster.com is doing is printing up tickets and mailing them to you (for ten dollars or so extra). It seems to me that the more popular the show is the easier time tickmaster should/would/does have selling its tickets. Yet the prices just rise and rise and there is little recourse for the customer. Try calling them, like I did. You will listen to dozens of options, perhaps finally speak with someone unhelpful, if you aren't kicked off the line first.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
dunceisme
|
|
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Reviews written: 12
Trusted by: 4 members
About Me:
Thanks for reading my reviews!
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.