Earlier this week there was an interesting piece on Fair Go examining the amount the consumer pays for booking fees for tickets to various types of events.
The show examined three vendors; Ticketek, Ticketmaster, and TicketDirect. The first two charge a flat transaction fee. Hence the consumer can pay $8.00 for the privilege of doing most of the work for the agency.
Considering this, I’m sure it’s just coincidence and a genuine care for the customer that has prompted the move to limiting the number of tickets that can be purchased in one transaction to make it more difficult for ticket scalpers and the like.
TicketDirect has a different structure due to it’s existence coming about because a large number of venues and organisations wanting to bring in house control of the ticket selling process once more. From what I’ve seen, the transaction costs on this site range from free to $2 a ticket, and is set by the venue/organisation themselves.
This is far more reasonable when purchasing a ticket for $10-$20 with a maximum 20% booking fee as opposed to 80% from one of the other vendors.
Consumer: be warned (or afraid; very afraid).
Comments
3 responses to “Ticket vendors – clipping the ticket, or taking pretty much the whole thing?”
🙁 More costs for us poor consumers.
This really sux as all these companies told us doing things online would be cheaper and it is to start with then they just ramp the prices up so the can make more and we end up paying the same. Banks are the same. Making payments online is the same as going in and cashing a check and one uses a lot less of the banks resources than the other
Don’t even get me started on banks…they’ll suck you dry wherever and whenever they can. Always have always will.