Rain won’t spoil Glastonbury, but booking fees might

rarar is spot on.
id go even further, if the tickets cannot be purchased without the booking fee, then its clear misrepresentation at the point of sale and as such, can be prevented quickly and easily by trading standards using the law!

advertising a false price would also breach advertising standards.

i once had one **** of an argument with a high st company, who uses a “catalogue” in their store, over buying a tumble dryer (had to use them we got vouchers)
the price of the item did not include the compulsary delivery charge.
i asked where i could pick the item up myself and was told it was not possible. i asked where then could i purchase the item for the advertised price, the answer of course was nowhere.
after threatening to get trading standards involved for misrepresentation and false advertising, i was told a concession could be made and the item could be delivered on their stock van to my local branch, where i could now pick it up without paying the compulsary delivery charge.

if trading standards applies the law, there would be no need for quangos, regulators, watchdogs, etc.

frugal ways – great story! Although it’s a shame you had to make such a fuss to get something at the advertised price!

Can you buy tickets without the booking fees? That’s one of my big unanswered questions at the moment. Of course as we haven’t done a full Which? investigation into it (yet?) I don’t want to say that it’s impossible. It is at least extremely difficult.

Would be really interested to hear from anyone who has managed to buy tickets without a booking fee, or perhaps from any festivals where the price advertised is the price you pay! Has anyone managed this? I’ll be asking some of the festival organisers to come and comment on this convo, so let’s see what they have to say.

For me, the most irritating example of this kind of practice is Ticketmaster who think it is acceptable to charge me a fee if I print my own ticket at home!!! I cannot believe is sort of practice is legal.

I Totally agree – and about time someone spoke out about this.
I’m sure no-one minds paying a good price to see a good performance as long as the bulk of the money goes to the Artist and Venue. But paying a large percentage in so called ‘fees’ to a global corporation put absolutely nothing into the industry is not on.
I will now never buy any ticket via Ticketmaster or SeeTickets and now go to smaller venues and pay a couple of quid in booking fees.
Best thing is … performances in small venues are ALWAYS better than seeing the big boys on a video screen!

Its time this was stopped. I recently bought 2 tickets for a concert in Glasgow. £55 each + 2 * £6.60 Card Handling Fee + £3.25 postage. Note this was NOT a booking fee but a card ‘handling’ fee. I wrote to them but they palmed me off and didn’t answer my query about the price of postage.

I know if they put the charges in the price you’ll end up paying the same – but at least you won’t feel ripped off.

Also strikes me as strange how the bigger venues charge the bigger prices

I totally agree that these charges are annoying and in some cases a blatant way of making more profit. I recently used my mobile phone to pay for parking at the local station as I did not have enough change for the meter and they slapped on an extra charge for the privilege of me making a 2 minute phone call to an answering machine. Surely this method means they need less time for staff to empty the meters and replenish the tickets?

I wanted to buy Day tickets for Latitude. As the booking fee was £7.00 per ticket, 10% of the ticket cost I eventually found on their website a place I could buy the tickets for cash. When my friend went to buy the tickets she was told they don’t have Day tickets, just weekend ones. I queried this by email with Latitude and I was told Day tickets sold out too quickly for them to give them to all outlets to sell. Apparently the £7 paid for VAT – really? and various other things. As a token of goodwill I was offered tickets with no booking fee, but Saturday was almost sold out so not worth asking for. I won’t be going to Latitude after all – and if more people took a stand against booking fees companies wouldn’t get away with it. I have sent to details to OFT.

There are plenty of places you can buy tickets (in person, online, over the phone) without a booking fee. West Yorkshire Playhouse, Sheffield Crucible and Lawrence Batley theatre in Huddersfield are the 3 I use most. And their ticket prices are a **** sight cheaper than the crazy prices charged by big concert venues before the charges are added. Someone said the venue should pay the agent and make the ticket the inclusive price – which makes sense. But remember, the places I’ve mentioned manage to have reasonably cheap ticket prices, INCLUDING their admin costs from the box office or the onlne costs. So an average (highest) price for a production might be, say, £24, £20 or £12 respectively for the ones I mentioned. Bradford Alhambra adds a £1 charge if you book voer the phone – £2 if you book online but that’s a ripoff because the people they use have set up a system which means effectively that you can’t choose your seats or even what part of the theatre you sit in – so you’d be silly to use it. Apparently they’ll be changing to a proper provider in due course. but no-one’s been able to tell me why they don’t just add £1 to the ticket price instead of charging a booking fee. While the Palace Theatre in Manchester (not as good a theatre as any of the Leeds, Sheffiel d and Bradford ones, charge far more for the basic ticket than any of them and use Ticketmaster instead of doing it themselves, so add another unjustifiable lump on top.

We were given an anniversary present of £100 pounds in Theatre Ticket Direct Vouchers. We added £25 so we got excellent seats at the Apollo Theatre (ie spend of £125) At NO time did Theatre Tickets Direct inform me that the face value of the vouchers did not equate to the face value of the seats.
We arrived at the theatre to discover the tickets had not been reserved in our name & then the tickets cost £99. So Theatre Tickets Direct made £26 out of us. That is a charge in excess of 26%! They claimed they could charge £25% & the 1% was for reserving the tickets (which they completely failed to do) No member of their management team was willing to discuss this with me. With the gift vouchers I was given I was forced to use this service rather than booking directly with the theatre so automatically devaluing the value of the gift. A concerted campaign is the only way to change this iniquitous system.

Hi Nikki

We totally agree. At the moment it’s the default business model to pass the ticket service costs on to the customers but why hasn’t this model changed in the last decade with the benefits of the internet and e-tickets??

So we have set up Ticket Tailor (www.tickettailor.com) which provides all the tools for promoters to take ticketing in-house, avoid agencies, and avoid charging their customers costly booking fees. We allow promoters to set their own booking fees if they wish which they get to keep.

You can see some case studies of how we have helped people so far with their ticketing: http://www.tickettailor.com/blog/

I recently purchased tickets for the FA Cup Final via the Club Wembley site. Once selected, the ticket price was increased by a 15% service charge (for Wembley admin) and £4.95 postage. Outrageous.

I think an important factor is repeatedly overlooked in this debate; the insistence that promoters have on releasing tickets on a Friday morning at 10am (or similar).

Given that the majority of customers will be at work at this time, promoters are playing into the hands of touts; they can happily sit at their PC’s clicking “refresh” and nabbing the best seats. When I get home at 6pm, I’m left with either a paltry choice of the worst tickets or – more likely – to find that the event is sold out.

So, the admin fees issue rarely affects me; I never get the chance to buy a ticket in the first place. The added cost that usually faces me is that of the mark-up applied by touts. So, sell the tickets at a time when everyone has a fair chance… Saturday, perhaps?

Furthermore, there were two consultation exercises conducted by the government on the sale of tickets, neither of which have apparently generated any conclusions.

Why are agencies allowed to “buy up ” blocks of tickets for shows and events and then sell them on at inflated prices? Is this not just akin to ticket touts selling second hand tickets for whatever they can con people out of?
I just advised a friend there were tickets for the Edinburgh Tattoo available (on the official website which I foolishly did not point out). Not realising there was an official website he almost purchased 2 tickets via “ticket4tattoo” at £172.85 including £24.85 booking fee and £8.00 postage.(These were £35 standard price tickets).
Fortunately he was stopped and redirected to the official website where he got his tickets (Standard£25 tickets) for £50.00 and £4.00 fees.
Is doubling the price of tickets and then adding booking and postage fees just taking things several steps too far!

Thanks for all your comments – despite the fact that I started the conversation I am still utterly shocked by some of the prices that are being charged.

Rosalyn – I am really impressed that you managed to get a ticket offered with no booking fee – that’s definitely the closest anyone’s come to winning the ‘no booking fee’ challenge! I had less luck with Latitude, sadly, and have had no response, even though I sent a link to this convo.

Robert, I think you’ve got a really good point as well! Although some of us have internet access at work, many don’t, and many more aren’t allowed to do personal errands like buying tickets online. OK, you’re never going to be able to choose a time when everyone is available, but I think you’re right – choosing 10am seems to be an obvious barrier to those who can’t get online between 9-5. Would be interested to see companies response to this – i.e. do they do it for technical reasons (getting servers online?) or is it a historical thing?

Jonny – very interesting idea, and I like that it should encourage festival planners to be more upfront about their pricing. But if you don’t charge fees to buyers or sellers, how are you funded?! Is it a subscription service for the seller? That seems to make sense and would also encourage sellers to calculate ticket costs as part of their general overheads.

Hi Nikki

We charge a simple subscription fee for the system based on the number of events being organised (www.tickettailor.com/pricing/).

It’s a different approach and is being received very well by our growing client base.

I have always wondered why are the additional fees separate?
Just about any other area of business, you factor your costs into the price you present to the buyer. The buyer then decides who offers the price and service that bests suits them.

Due to the different options available, I believe P&P should be the only ‘extra’, everything else should be factored into the up-front cost. That way just as you can with most other services, you can directly compare competing outlets on a like for like basis.

The only grey area might be whether or not to force them to also give the face value of the ticket, so you can be more certain that a) you are not being overcharged b) you can be sure you are comparing similar seating etc.

I need to add my comments as I calm down from a recent ticket purchase.

Two tickets for the British Grand Prix Squash tournament at Manchester seemed good value at £10 each.

After deciding to purchase, a note appears at the bottom of the screen about £5 UK Postage & Packing. I still decided to proceed despite having to pay 25% extra to have the tickets delivered.

Imagine my state when, 5 mins after completing the transaction, I received an email from isportgroup with an attachment, which was my ticket, that I had to print.

A phone call to Ian Johnson (Retail Sales Manager of iSportstore Ltd), (using saynotot0870.com to avoid the 0844 charges!), revealed they had not updated the web site and it should have been shown as a ‘Booking fee’.

When asked, where I could have purchased to avoid the booking fee, the only way was to purchase at the venue on the day and risk there being no seats left.

So it should really be called a ‘guaranteed seat charge’?

Whatever it is called it should be shown on the front page with the ticket price and explain what it is for.

My intended theatre ticket purchase through ATG Tickets would cost:

The show is £15 per ticket; Restoration fund levy £1 per ticket; Booking Fee £4.50 per ticket; Postage charge £4 (Yes a £4 charge for one envelope & 39p postage!)
So for two people £45 rather than £30 at the door.
Ridiculous; I wont be going!

Royal Albert Hall website

2 tickets @ £67.50 –Face cost £135
BUT towards the end of the transaction extra Charge £6.70
Explained as “2% administration charge on the total transaction plus £2 per ticket”

Beware the RAH

I feel like i’m getting so ripped off with these scams!! It’s really difficult to avoid the charges. I am trying to buy 3 tickets for Against time at the New Alexandra Theatre, so whats the big deal right?
They advertise tickets from £11 each, great so as a family we can all go to see a dance show (as my partner and son are really into dance) at a reasonable price. Yes the tickets are up for sale, however if you try to buy direct the website leads you straight to ATG Tickets!! And yes you guessed it there’s a theatre restoration charge and a booking fee. No way to opt out and no breakdown! The phone numbers for the theatre are the same as this agency too. So the advertised £11 tickets are now £15.23 each. Now don’t get me wrong there is not a problem with a £15 ticket to watch a show but its the principle of the miss selling. If some of the money is going into a restoration fund shouldn’t I choose to do that?? Infact I would love to support our heritage but I like to be involved and have the choice!
Rant over but I’m furiously in a rock and a hard place. I want my son to see the show but resent the rip off fees.

I just bought a couple of tickets for a concert at the Aylesbury Waterside theatre via ATG. How nice! Early bird discounted price of £20 per ticket. A pop up notified me that there would be £1.50 admin charge per ticket. OK, so I went on to the paying screen. Somehow my £40 ticket price has attracted an ATG transaction fee of £2.85 + another complex sounding fee of £5.80. Postage of tickets seems to be free and they didn’t charge extra for credit card. However my total payment has escalated to £48.65 and I’m not happy at what seems to be 20%+ admin charge on my ticket price! The first time I backed out to see if I could get the tickets cheaper but ATG seems to have ring-fenced most of the seats so that on other sites it appears that the theatre is virtually full, and so I had no choice.
At Gloucester Choral Society we use the Everyman Theatre ticketing service. We absorb the cost of their admin charges in the ticket price so that the advertised price is the price you pay. We were very clear that we didn’t want our customers to be disenchanted and our name to be besmirched by this shady practice! At these levels I think the charges are evil!

Purchased a latitude weekend ticket at a good price £137.50 then add on £25 booking fee and £10.50 postage you end up at £173 the postage is ridiculous and as for the booking fee its daylight robbery.