Can't some government agency break these assholes up for being a f'ing monopoly? What a name these dicks have given themselves - Ticket Master -- "We are the Masters of Tickets, bow before us".

I heard they were going to start auctioning the best seats for shows soon. Thats just fabulous. Fuc these guys. There's gotta be a better way.

I know exactly how you feel.

How they get away with charging $10 to mail each ticket is beyond me. That usualy works out to $40 to print and mail tickets, all of which is (or should be) compleetly automated. Of course, 1/3 of that goes right back to the venue, so part of it is just lies-in-advertising.

Matthew

Exactly. I'm trying to get tickets for this show. The ticekts are $10, plus a $3.50 "convenience charge" per ticket, plus the insane shipping charge.

it really is ridiculous.

The company pissed me off even more recently. When I wanted to go see Lollapalooza, I went online to see if any tickets were left. There were, but they were lawn. I would have prefered seating under the roof area (it was a hot day), but I wasn't presented with the option.

Well, the day of the show, low and behold, about a third of the seating sections were completely empty and remained so for the entire event.

I hate you ticketmaster.

Oh, and one of the more sad/ironic experiences I had this summer was paying over $50 for lawn seats to a Pearl Jam show.

Oh, and one of the more sad/ironic experiences I had this summer was paying over $50 for lawn seats to a Pearl Jam show.

I think the Pearl Jam show here was what promted me to write that first rant... Luckily things didn't work out with the chick I was going to take, so it wasn't the end of the world. I heard the show was great though.

Now that I leave right outside of San Francisco i can show up at the venue and see if they have tickets. For club shows that I'm not too dedicated to going to, it works out fine.

Matthew

I heard they were going to start auctioning the best seats for shows soon.

Now, see, this... this gets to me. It's bad enough that tickets to a show can be sold out mere minutes after they go on sale online because scalpers snach them up to resell them on eBay for insane prices. But now, Ticketmaster decideds to what, try to stop that by just auctioning off the good seats to begin with? And I'm sure the fact that they'll get double, sometime triple the face value of the ticket didn't appeal to them. Either way, anyone determined to get a decent seat is going to overpay extremely, especially with the "convenience charge," etc. And why does it cost so much to mail a ticket or two when it goes out in a standard envelope? If they have an account with USPS, it should cost about 0.27 to mail that envelope. It certainly doesn't arrive any faster because of the extra charge.

Can't some government agency break these assholes up for being a f'ing monopoly?

Pearl Jam sued them for just that years ago. The court disagreed.

There's nothing wrong legally with being a monopoly. Using your monopoly unfairly to perpetuate that monopoly is illegal.

So it is not illegal that one company handles such a huge percentage of ticket sales, or that they charge such a ludicrous fee.

However, if eg you started a rival agency and had a venue/event willing to use you, and then TM stepped in, offering ludicrous venue/event -benficial terms, eg, paying the venue 5x face value per ticket as long as the venue continued to use TM from then on, and then gave away the tickets for free, that probably would be illegal. It would make no business sense for TM to offer those terms for that event - they would only do so to kill off the competetion and lock in the event, and could only fund it due to the strength of their monoploy. Ala Microsoft/Netscape.

I hate TM fees too. I remember when the whole concept of outsourcing ticket sales was a fairly new idea. In many ways it was (and still is) a god send in convenience. Before you'd have to contact the venue directly to buy tickets. Today that wouldn't be a huge issue, but trying to find the phone number for an obscure venue in a distant city whose phone book you didn't have could be interesting. And then you often had to phone multiple times, firstly because every venue seemed to have different box office opening hours, and secondly because they only seemed to have 1 line and it was constantly engaged. And after all that, they still usually charged you some random fee to cover postage etc., although it was usually a more reasonable figure, 5-10% of face value. (Often you'd only pay one fee on a handful of tickets though).

TM take all that hassle away. In one respect though, it's not a good thing; True fans have no advantage over the masses any more. If a well known band is playing a relatively small venue today then it can come down to ping times or dialling speed. In the pre-TM days you could usually increase your chances with some effort, eg postal ticket requests were often allocated separately or handled earlier. Usually queuing outside the box office for a few hours could guarantee a ticket too. (As long as you got the right day )
TM has taken most of that away.

I'm not generally into bands that require TicketMaster to see them (let's hear it for jazz musicians), but a friend of mine is a huge Matchbox 20 fan. Through their "Fanbox 20" fan club, she somehow scored 2nd row tickets at face value to their recent concert here. So, there's at least some benefit to the whole fan club thing.

And why does it cost so much to mail a ticket or two when it goes out in a standard envelope?

Hey, they've got to run a business. I just intensly dislike that business. They've got staff to pay.

What has pissed me off even more of late is that for about three out of the last four concerts I've bought tickets for, they haven't even done their job. I didn't receive the tickets in the mail, and they make sure I can pick them up at will call. Where's the convenience there?

Through their "Fanbox 20" fan club, she somehow scored 2nd row tickets at face value to their recent concert here. So, there's at least some benefit to the whole fan club thing.

And this is something ticketmaster is fighting as we speak. I of course can't find the article (it may have been a local weekly paper) but ticketmaster is trying prevent venues from giving seats to the bands.

My favorite ticketmaster alternative, ticketweb, was of course acquired by ticketmasteras soon as it got vaugely popular. And amazingly enough, ticketing fees are up to $5 per ticket for the concert I'm thinking of going to instead of the one or two bucks they used to be.

Matthew

Me, I started using TicketFast. If the only way for me to get tickets to a show I wish to attend is through Ticketmaster, then that's how I do it. I don't find that fee unreasonable (yet), since I know that they are actually using some technology that had to be paid for in order to generate and send me my ticket quickly.

I've also not really minded Tickets.com, which services several of the venues I regularly attend, and their service charge is usually much lower.

Burns: And to think, Smithers. You laughed when I bought Ticketmaster. “Nobody’s going to pay a 100 percent service charge.”

Smithers: Well, it’s a policy that ensures a healthy mix of the rich and the ignorant, sir.