Surprised!

same thing happened with White Stripes cancellations. Id fucking yell and holler, govt should step in and force them to return the money. class action lawsuit or something like that.

I concur! I had the same experience with the Cure show that was postponed til next June - I don't know if I'm even going to be living in NY next June but if I want a refund, I'll lose at least $15 in processing fees. For what, I ask?

Lefsetz published the same letter. Here's to hoping Live Nation launches an decent ticket service.

to 10:33 same thing when Tool postponed shows last year. They wouldnt give the people money back for a whole year. Kept all the money! can you believe that. Excuse was that the shows werent cancelled just postoponed. but like you said who the hell know 1 year later what you will be doing. they should just give the people money back.

That couple of bucks per ticket doesnt probably isn't even profit. If they didn't get something to cover their overhead, they would be losing money on every cancelled show. Its the promoter that you should be mad at. Ticketmaster saved you 2 trips to the box office (1 to buy the ticket and 1 to return it) and charged you less than it would cost in gas to do it yourself. Sounds like a good deal.

what is so ridiculous with these service charges (which usually are like 25%) of the ticket price is that after touring expenses for the band and what not, ticketmaster probably makes more off every ticket than the actual band does. I buy tickets at my school's box office for like a 12 dollar club show with 4 dollar service fee. Then there is like a 2 dollar convenience charge. what is convenient about that? it's not like they're paying any rent probably (it's in the student union) and they barely pay the students i'm sure who run it. I’d have no problem paying the band that price for the show but it pisses me off that some guy on top is probably making tens to hundreds of millions a year off of shit like this while bands make no money these days.

Live Nation is almost worse. I bought a ticket to Comedians of Comedy for $25. Add in a service charge of >$7 and an order processing fee of $4.50 and that total was $37! Sucks.

if y'all figured it out, you'd see that ticketmaster splits fees with venues so they continue their monopoly or strong hold in major markets. Don't be DUM enough to think they keep it all....get it?

Why do you think you would ever get a processing fee back? Tickets were printed and shipped, right? Like they'd even consider giving that back?

Think....

A transaction occurred. Ticketmaster performed it. They provided you a service. Why would they refund you the money you paid them for that service? Can they go back in time and "unperform" it?

Is this really news? TicketMaster has been doing this for a long time now. It's just getting to be annoying because a lot of the bands/artists are cancelling shows this year for one reason or another.

Either the musicians or their management stop going through TM for their event ticketing or some other business compete against TicketMaster with less fees. (Those LiveNation presale tickets I've gotten so far are pretty much the same amount of service fees. No hope there.) Now which of those choices are going to be likely? Anyone going to step up? Hm? Didn't think so.

in like april or may for that deerhoof/dirty projectors show i believe tickets were listed at about 17$ and with the service charges for two tickets ended up being 52$. a couple of years ago i do not remember their surcharges being so ridiculous . i can only assume they've been raising them. it should be 8%-10% of each tickets' face value, then it wouldn't be so bad (also if they didn't seem to charge a convenience fee for the convenience fee!).

didn't pearl jam sue ticketmaster in the 90s over what was at the time a 2 dollar service charge in an attempt to keep tickets under 20 dollars for their fans. now staduim shows are always at least 40 dollars and over 50 with fees. pearl jam cancelled a year of touring and took the case infront of congress and lost. our gov't needs to do something to protect the consumers or bands need to organize ticketmasterless tours. PJ and radiohead did it at some point but because of ticketmaster/clear channel monopoly it's almost impossible.

is this any different than a shipping and handling charge when you order stuff online? if you return something, they don't refund you the s+h charge.

This isn't new news, but it's always good to keep it in the publie eye. And yes, it's one of the major reasons why the music industry is going down. Also, Richard Branson has just sold Virgin Megastores in the UK:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article2474850.ece

11:24 AM, your S+H charge scenario is different..that would be akin to the consumer ordering tickets through Ticketmster, then changing their mind & asking for a refund. It would make no sense for mail order companies, or Ticketmaster, to keep refunding S+H fees after they already spent the $$ to ship it to you just to have you change your mind. (Of course, if there are probs with the order a *good* mail order company will refund the S+H too..good luck getting Ticketmaster to do that!)

sort of serves you right for digging bela fleck.

on one hand, i would think i should side with the consumer, partly b/c TM is loathsome, partly because fees are exorbitant, but mostly because i would feel entitled to a full refund (after all, i would have received nothing, nothing but dashed hopes).

that said, the fee is disclosed as non-refundable (technical picky picky), and you got 96.3% of your money back. ticketmaster did do work to process the order in the first place. and they did incur some overhead in processing the refund, as well.

now, i know, i know, their fees are so ridiculous that these fees really shouldn't need to be tacked on to cover their overhead (just figure out a single, straight fee or percentage or whtaever it needs to be and be done with it), but still.

They're greedy bastards. Ticketmaster charges so much because they know they can get away with it.

The only way to show your disdain for Ticketmaster's policies is to boycott them. I haven't purchased a ticket through them in over 4 years and I still go to a lot of concerts.

A lot of smaller venues have their own online ticket companies that add a very reasonable $1-3 service charge. I just avoid big concerts that sell out fast.

Don't let yourself be taken advantage of. Damn the man!!!

The worst thing is when they charge you $2.50 to print your tickets at home. THEY charge YOU $2.50 to use your precious color ink and save them the trouble of having to mail you anything.

we all know that it's a big rip off to even buy tickets through ticketmaster.
i have been screwed with the cancelled show thing a few times
sucks
but wha can you do?

it's an election year coming up - if everyone took five minutes to write to officials maybe something might happen. but we all know it's easier to just complain and accept the b.s. (or to just post complaints on blogs like i'm doing here haha)
in the very least, the ticketmaster fees should be upfront in the price. to list tickets at $25 which are then really charged something in the neighborhood of $40 is deceiving
the great thing about all this is that ticketmaster has reached its highwater mark. with the internet and online ticketing, here come a whole flock of competitors that will do it all cheaper and more efficiently

yay for ticketweb and ducat king. i'm just sayin'.

The Ticketmaster thing sucks, but they did uphold their part of the bargain. They provided the service you paid them to provide, so it's unsurprising they're unwilling to refund the fee. It'd be a great PR move if they did, though.

Did anyone else read the rest of that Music Industry's Most Hated article? What a sack of shit. It may make sense to the casual music fan, but for people who go to concerts and buy albums on a regular basis (i.e. most of the people reading this blog), it's laughable.

all you motherfucking tickemaster apologists are fucking giving me a heart attack.

you promise the service if you dont deliver the service i want my motherfucking moeny back, understand?
whod ever heard of a scam like that? think about what if a movie theater cancelled a show and wanted to keep some of the money for "ticket handling"? fuck you man, thered be a riot. you fucked up by cancelling the show you take a loss, not the consumer. I really believe congress or local officials should look into this.

keep money for the stamp ok? keep the fucking 39 cents. but 3 or for dollars fuck you! keep 2 cents for the cardboard. that they put that little disclaimer is bullshit i bet its agaisnt the law in most states why do you think these bullshit corporations like Verizon and AOL had to settle class action suits? cause they fucking nickle and dimed their consumers. fucking aol was the worse, once you joined they made you jump hoops to leave.

in summary- fuck you ticketmaster.

11:48 AM, you *do* know that Ticketweb is owned by Ticketmaster, right?

why is everybody so shocked and appalled at these fees?

are the fees ridiculous?? of course.

does ticketmaster claim to be "a cheap ticket hookup"?? no.

does ticketmaster claim to be a business whose main objective is to turn profit?? yes.

do we live in a capitalist society?? yes.

if everybody hates the fees so much, go to the box office and buy tickets...simple

capitalist society means you are free to RIP OFF THE CONSUMER?

what about warranty laws? money back guarantees? Im not a lawyer but im pretty sure each state has a law that forces businesses to honor their warranties. and if a provision or disclaimer is deemed illegal by law, then they cant keep on enforcing it. this non refundable fee someone is reading the small print on. I really do hope some laywer bring a class action suit.

They did the same thing for Amy Winehouse at Central Park. I wasn't happy, but I just couldn't be bothered.

i want to be part of TM and fuck everyone

11:54 AM: yes i do, but at the moment they aren't jacking those fees up. so i'm hoping whatever power ticketweb has to keep it down will hold for a bit. i'll take what i can get, ya know?

12:03:

Show me where Ticketmaster ever offered you a money back guarantee on your processing fee.

yay for ticketweb?

it's one and the same....

and ticketmaster is starting to move some of the mercury/bowery shows from the web to the master

bah!

12:11 they dont have to offer it. if courts judge a provision of a guarantee illegal, then they can force businesses to pay up. you think all these business in america has guarantees out of goodness of their hearts? they do it because theres comsumer laws on the book to force them to give guerantees.

12:11 they dont have to offer it. if courts judge a provision of a guarantee illegal, then they can force businesses to pay up. you think all these business in america has guarantees out of goodness of their hearts? they do it because theres comsumer laws on the book to force them to give guerantees.

Bela Fleck fans still use terms like "THE MAN"? Groovy.

To whomever said that Ticketmaster performed a service, that service was giving you tickets to a show in exchange for money. If I buy a contract with an agent to buy a house and the seller does not perform (i.e., sell), then the agent gets no money. Why should Ticketmaster be any different? I would take them to small claims court. Seriously. They wouldn't show up, you'd get a judgment, and you'd eventually get your money plus some interest. Personally, I'm not doing it because I don't have the time, but one of you college kids should try to do it as a civics project or something. Seriously, I'd help!

Has anyone noticed with some of the Mercury Lounge shows, that Ticketmaster does not order a US Cardholder Will-Call option (only international cardholders), and that they will not mail it to you, only UPS it for an extra fee?

Maybe it was just for the one show I bought tickets for, but I thought this was ridiculous. Granted, I could just go down to Merc Lounge and buy them (that's what I did), but at least before on ticketweb i could have will call or cheap shipping. This is easier for some people who want to buy ahead of time without going down to Merc.

You got all but what, 4 bucks back?

Shut up and stop being a whiner! Ticketmaster oddly enough has to pay their employees. You're paying for that with at least one of the fees, and regardless of the fact that the show didn't go down those people still got paid to supply you with your order. I'd imagine that the amount of people who had to work, the bandwidth, the servers, and whatever else it took to process the orders amounted to plenty over $1,500.

Now, if they'd kept the entire $12.50/ticket in service fees you'd have some complaining to do I think. But, they gave those back when they didn't necessarily have to do that, they really could just give you back face value of the ticket and keep all convenience and processing fees if they wanted to structure the prices in such a way.

But, everyone's gotta find their own little whine with ticketmaster right? If you don't like it and you think you can make a better profit-driven model, please go ahead and start your own ticketing companiy. Offer more skim to the venues and they'll gladly dump ticketmaster since they just want a bigger cut of the profits anyway. Tickets.com is just as expensive as ticketmaster (I don't think they're related are they?) so I'm not sure the anti-TM mindless hate parade is going to accomplish much anyway.

Hey 12:55, you are an ignorant fool. Do you really think that TM is barely breaking even? It is making plenty of money on the concerts that actually occur, regardless of the money made fleecing people out of ticket fees. Moreover, if TM is only sustainable by stealing money from consumers, than it should go out of business. You seem to argue that a business can disregard the law in order to stay competitive. That's foolish. Similarly, you mix up your issues by injecting the venue kick-backs. That's not the issue. It is TM charging for a service that, arguably, never happened (i.e., a concert).

that is such bullshit what you just said there Dave. if you take a car for repair and they cant repair it do they keep some of the money anyway because they had to pay rent, workers, electricity? no, they just hand you the money back. this is no different, like someone said you promised a service you didnt deliver the service, the consumer dont owe you shit. make the money come out of promoter or venues pocket, not the consumers pocket. and yes i hope some students even law students bring a case cause this shit has to stop

my favorite thing about ticketmaster is that they actually charge you EXTRA to get ticketfast tickets so you can print them out at home. instead of them having to print them and mail them to you, you save them that expense and they make you pay MORE for it. fucking evil bastards. it's run by barry diller who is a greedy mfer, his CEO compensation last year was close to $300 million, so you know where those fucking bullshit service charges are going. fuck them.

I'm definitely gonna talk to my Contracts professor about this tonight.

For those that think Ticketmaster is making a killing, I'd suggest taking a look at buying a few shares of the company, NASDAQ: IACI. Others should stay far away.

http://finance.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=IACI

it's hard to imagine providing services to concerts that have never taken place... unless you count all the people who bought tickets through the phone and online customer service. even then, the interaction with the TicketMaster employee is very minimal and impersonal -- many of us are just happy to make the purchase or process a refund. for all we know it's less than a hundred on their payroll, but it could also be made up of hundreds.

if you're going to try to bring a class action suit, keep in mind they have employees, on standby, during business hours -- whether you're buying concert tickets or not. give it a try and call one of 'em for the hell of it because THAT is what we're paying for. idle hands? perhaps not. just because they're not handling BV-mention-worthy events doesn't mean they don't have others to deal with (sports, theater, etc).

does this justify the high fees? how the hell should i know? i don't want the $15 markup either and i think they're bastards every time i make an online purchase!... but at least get all the facts, no?

I love the hypocracy of some (repeat, SOME) of you, complaining about the service charges of tickets you are simply reselling for even more outrageous prices on C-list, further depriving the bands of their rightful cut. I would never defend Ticketmaster and their gouging, but what a ridiculous double-standard...

I've stopped going to shows where I have to deal with TICKETMASTER. Their 20% 'convenience fee' is nothing short of loan shark rates. Go out and support local music instead!

Actually, TM would pocket $2055 in that scenario.

500 people X $4.11 = 2055

But that's if 500 people each bought 2 tix.

A quick comment on the "Music Industry's Most Hated" article: to think that having the service fees included in the price of the ticket will bring down ticket prices is ridiculous. A $25 ticket with $15 dollar in service fees will become a $40 ticket.

One of the things Pearl Jam won when they went up against TM was to have the services fees separated from the base price. This was pivotal since consumers could finally see how the money was being divided up. To reverse that would end up hurting musicians and artist greatly since they would be blamed for high prices by the public instead of the real culprits, the ticket brokers, taking the blame.

Ticketweb does refund ALL fees.

Also just because a show is LISTED ONLINE at ticketmaster.com - it does not mean it is a ticketmaster event. All of the ticketweb listings are mirrored on ticketmaster.com these days.

When you click on the link - you are taken to the direct link on the ticketweb site

A quick comment on the "Music Industry's Most Hated" article: to think that having the service fees included in the price of the ticket will bring down ticket prices is ridiculous. A $25 ticket with $15 dollar in service fees will become a $40 ticket.

This is called "TRUTH IN PRICING" - and it COULD work. The idea is that the artist would become more involved with the ticketing process and the public in theory would begin to demand a cheaper alternative

As the owner of a car, there's a nit I want to pick:

...if you take a car for repair and they cant repair it do they keep some of the money anyway because they had to pay rent, workers, electricity? no, they just hand you the money back...

Anonymous | September 18, 2007 1:25 PM

You mean the auto repair shop won't charge you. (Repair shops don't usually demand money upfront; the law allows them to keep your car until you pay the bill.) But that's not always the case. While the time my car's A/C needed fixing, I was able to get free estimates from two or three repair shops (including one new car dealer), when the instrument panel and climate control system stopped working, the (different) new car dealer I took it to charged me money to diagnose the problem (understandable, since the cause of the problem wasn't obvious) but waived the diagnosis charge once I agreed to have them perform the (expensive) repair.

What happens when an auto repair shop services a car, collects money from the car owner and returns the car, but the problem resurfaces? The shop typically does NOT refund the car owner's money. Is that legal? I guess it depends on each particular case; it happens that the repair shop tells the car owner, "We believe your problem is caused by a failed flux capacitor, so we shall replace it for $X" and that's what the shop does but it turns out that replacing the flux capacitor fails to correct the problem — that (apparently) is legal. Even when it's not legal, not many car owners are willing to go through the hassle of suing the repair shop in small claims court.

go to the fucking box offices.

Why is this a surprise? This has been the policy at least since 1987 when I worked for BASS tickets. They keep the fee because they did you a favor. Ticketing fees are outrageous to begin with and why people didn't get behind Pearl Jam when they were trying to fight this is beyond me. Especially since the creation of on-line buying, Ticketmaster does nothing to warrant these fees. You do all the work and pay for it. The government is far more worried about something that would benefit the population like the proposed merger of Sirius and XM, but they don't care when it comes to us actually getting ripped off.

Just beacuse it's not a suprise doesn't make it any less of a rip-off.

another horrible thing now is it hardly ever lets me do will call for shows. no will call encourages scalping and makes me have to pay extra to print out the tickets myself because my billing adress on my credit card is different from where i live (college student).

another horrible thing now is it hardly ever lets me do will call for shows. no will call encourages scalping and makes me have to pay extra to print out the tickets myself because my billing adress on my credit card is different from where i live (college student).

fandango only charges 1 dollar on top of the movie tickets. why does it cost ticketmaster so much more? it doesnt. motherfuckers with all the corruption also....like trying to get arcade fire tix exactly when they went onsale to see half of the venues capacity on stubhub, craigslist and ebay the next day.

oddly, when Morrissey cancelled his MSG show in June, they DID refund the service/processing fees along with the ticket value. I got a full refund. Must've been a mistake. I was surprsed NOT to get ripped off!

and yes, it IS a rip off when you sell something and don't deliver it. Duh. Ticketmaster's obvs got some Ticketservants on here, but that's no reason the rest of us should take them seriously.

Ticketweb is much, much worse than Ticketmaster, including the way they (1) inevitably "lose" will-call purchases, and (2) charge UPS fees for hard tix.

pearl jam

you should direct your ire toward the performers as well. afterall, they didn't deliver, right?

I was actually dumb enough to buy a Fugazi ticket through ticketbastard. $5.00 ticket. $2.50 service charge. 50% of the ticket price!

oddly, I didn't get a full refund for my Morrissey MSG tix.

I think it makes sense for Ticketmaster to keep its fees, but I also think it should be the responsibility of the band who bailed (or their people) to pay for it, not the consumer. We're not the ones who fucked up/got sick/WTFever.

slow news day=put up random rant about ticketmaster and watch the sparks fly. this could be a blog post from 2002.

Interesting that this is becoming news.

This happened to me 3 years ago when they cancelled Lollapalooza in NYC. Agreed it's total bullshit. But what can the little guy do other than going direct to the box office?

Ticketmaster is a profit-margin company. Until one is intelligent enough to start their own ticket-agency, go into business for themselves, and learn how to sell venues into accepting your events for a low-fee, please continue to whine & bitch, because it won't accomplish a thing. Eddie Vedder & his rag-tag band of fools failed to sway Ticketmaster one way or the other, and alot of other musicians, like Jackson Brown and about a dozen other acts wanted to join a large class-action lawsuit, but Eddie, being an ego-boy decided to have a go at it, and painfully lost. Again, money is what dictates everything in this country. I find it comical to see a chorus of whiners who have yet to figure that out. Start your own buisiness and beat them at their own game, it's still an open market out there isn't it?

Deb has a point, we live in a free market economy. If you can do a better job than Ticketmaster, open up your own ticket agency, and start competing. This is EXACTLY what Ticketweb did, whereupon they got bought out by Ticketmaster, and the owner/startup guy made a lot of money off the sale. In this day and age, it's actually pretty easy for venues to create their own online ticket service (I just bought some tickets for a BAM show, very easy).
If you are upset about the charges, complain to the bands, the venue, and the promoter. I've personally complained to people at the Mercury Lounge/ Bowery Presents about their current arrangement. I've strongly suggested that they stop going through Ticketmaster, but they clearly didn't. If enough people complain, or they start losing money because people are price sensitive, then they will change. Alternately, if enough people bitch loudly enough, claim that they will boycott Bowery Presents shows until they reduce prices etc..., they might change (it is worth noting, that Bowery Presents actually gets better rates than most Ticketmaster customers, which are passed on to ticket buyers).
My point here is that online bitching isn't going to do anything, you need to bitch to the people in charge, vote with your wallet (no money to Ticketmaster shows), or better yet, start a NEW online ticket service which can outcompete Ticketmaster.

They kept the service fee considering i was cancelling tickets to a show i had to miss due to a conflict. They wouldn't refuse to refund their fee which seemed reasonable considering that it was better than being stuck with tickets i wouldn't use. Thats the only time i feel it's appropriate for them not to refund the service charges.

why was 'fuck' censored midway through the rant but not in the opening sentence?

"you should direct your ire toward the performers as well. afterall, they didn't deliver, right?"

dude you better believe it i will. if i ever see jack or meg the first words out of my mouth will be you owe me fucking 11 dollars. i dont give a fuck if youre mister rock star or what bullshit like that has to stop. fuck those dudes.

you apologists make it seem like this is small change, on a 4 ticket purchase im out 22 dollars? thats outrageous. just do the math on an average arena show, 15 thousand tickets sold they walk away with $60 grand? fuck that. there should be an investigation. and you know what thanks for the idea lets start some kind of a petition or letter campaign to stop this nonsense.

Yeah man, we all should boycott ticketmaster. I wish Pearl Jam still hated them and refused to use them. I tried getting Foo Fighter tickets today for Irving tomorrow and they were sold out before they even went on sale. I called my roomate who works at Irving at 1157 and they were sold out already.

i think its ridiculous ticketmaster charges you more to buy tickets online, its almost like 2 convienance fees. i would think as a business they should encourage you to buy online because its better for them because it saves them money from labor making the actual sale