Our
View: Ticketmaster rip-off
We
all know how hard it can be to get halfway
decent tickets to a concert you really want
to see. Now a new hurdle has been added
to our path. In addition to ridiculous charges
tacked on one after another to the original
ticket price, the really good seats will
now be auctioned off by Ticketmaster to
ensure that they are getting the biggest
bang for our buck.
What
really chaps our hide is that ticket prices
are already often doubled by handling and
credit card fees that are in addition to
the ticket price. And now the value of a
ticket will not be determined by a predefined
"value," but by the amount some
loony with a credit card is willing to go
into debt.
For
all of us not willing to break the bank
for our favorite band, we will have to settle
with second-rate seating that is not snazzy
enough to garner auction support. Either
that or we will have to set up camp with
a radio and our cell phone to try and win
the tickets from some radio station.
Every
path with Ticketmaster seems to have an
extra little price tag. Whether your printing
it off your own computer or picking it up
from the House of Blues they make us pay
and pay and pay. Handling charges, shipping
charges, home-printing charges, credit card
charges, venue fees and original ticket
price.
The
company says that the performers and all
the other people in the chain of command
deserve to make the extra buck more than
some guy on E-bay, but it is supposed to
be about the customers, not who can make
the most money by manipulating the market.
Ticketmaster and performers alienate a huge
amount of their audience by opening up all
ticket sales to this kind of extortion.
Not
only that, but the chances of overall ticket
prices going up are high once the CEOs realize
how much tickets can be sold for and how
much profit they can make. Unfair is the
word to describe this new policy and the
repercussions on the concert circuit and
music industry will be noticeable. We just
finally start to get compact disc prices
to go down and now the real thing is going
to fly through the roof.
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