Paying an extra charge to see a show just isn’t tickety-boo!
Acherished delight about resuming a normal-ish existence is to return to theatres, concert halls and stadiums. We pay of course. Nothing new there. However, there was a time when if you wished to see Emmerdale: The Musical (matter of time) then you handed over your cash then took your ticket, after a modest amount of work by another human being.
Then came booking fees, which felt to punters like being penalised for buying.
Of course, people processing the transaction had to be paid. But it would have been more honest to add it to the ticket price, which is all the customer is interested in.
Now it’s difficult to buy a ticket for any event whereby any person, with the exception of the purchaser, does any work.
While football fans, for example, can still buy tickets in the traditional manner, online purchasing of one ticket can incur a £1.25 administration fee.
Understood. What remains unexplained is why two tickets incur £2.50 in this way, when no additional “administration” is needed.
That is by no means the worst example.
One venue we won’t name is charging £36 for less-good seats at a forthcoming show.
Added to the cost of each ticket though is £4.50 service charge, £1.35 facility charge plus £2.50 handling fee for each total purchase.
In other words, another £14.20 is whacked on for two tickets already costing a basic £72.
That’s an £86.20 total. Why? What are we getting for the price hike?
And while we’re here, what’s the difference between a service charge, a facility charge and a handling fee?
In a world where postage and packing is nearing obsolescence and only the buyer does any actual work; what are we paying for?
Former Chancellor and Business Secretary Sajid Javed once described ticket touts as “classic entrepreneurs”.
The admiration is not widely shared, but don’t expect the Government to interfere with this entirely legal racket.
Clamping down on it would be a terrible blow to an industry in which a fortune is being made in exchange for very little.
But how terribly upsetting for precisely no one else.