I go to buy tickets the other day for a concert online from Ticketmaster...the price of the ticket is 15 bucks. I buy two tickets, and the total price comes to..........................48 bucks! So basically that's 30 dollars for two tickets, and 18 dollars for...for....for....uh, I don't know. Pieces of ****.
Rant Off! Those are service fees....so they can service themselves when your not looking. You got ripped...you should have three tickets instead of two. That's TicketMaster for you...the Master of the Ticket universe...or should I say Nazis of the Ticket universe. TicketNazis.
Capitalism - n. an economic system in which the production and distribution of goods depend on invested private capital and profit making. God bless America!
There is a difference between profit and theft. Ticketmaster also makes money from the venue, since Ticketmaster gets a % from each ticket sold, and whatever their service charge is. $9 service charge on a $15 is nothing less than robbery. 60% of the ticket cost for a service charge? And it doesn't matter if you buy 1 or 10 tickets, each one has the same service charge. It's crazy! That's why I drive to the Compaq Center, and buy a bunch of tickets for the season and pay face value and no service charge or tax. I bought 40 tickets last season through the Rockets box office, and had I got them through Ticketmaster with a $5 service charge per ticket it would have been $200. If it was a $9 service charge I would have wasted $360 for the "convenience" of not buying the tickets at the stadium. The other problem I have with Ticketmaster is they have no true competition. They can pretty much get away with whatever they want most of the time since most people don't know whether or not they can buy the tickets directly from the venue. If Ticketmaster charged a flat fee for the convenience charge for 1-10 tickets or charged a reasonable percentage 5-20% of the ticket price, not to excede $10 then we wouldn't have hateful threads like these, and maybe, just maybe I might get more tickets from them. Enough of my ranting... B
A-Train, you're stupid. They're ripping everybody off! can't you see? It's one thing to make a profit, its another thing to charge these fukcing crazy prices.
You really want to blame someone, try everyone who pushed so hard for deregulation. Ticketmaster is owned by one of the six major media conglomerates in the world - Paramount/Viacom - which formed after media deregulation. A big chunk of them is also owned by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen. Since their merger, Ticketmaster has become the ONLY major ticket broker in the world. They have a strategic partnership with Clear Channel Communications which owns Pace Concerts, the world's largest concert promoter. They are a monopoly but they do it legally by squashing or buying out the competition rather than actually playing fair. All of this as a result of deregulation that was supposed to be so great for the consumer. Oh, well.
Please bend over and grab your ankles while ticketmaster sticks you!! Its such bullsh!t and it should really be illegal. Is there any chance that ticketmasters' ways are going to change anytime soon with actual competition? Does anyone remember Ticketron?
Now that the juvenile name calling portion of this conversation is over...I don't use ticketmaster, so I must be smarter than a few people...
Ticketron was eaten by Ticketmaster. They are a legal monopoly. No other company can challenge them because of their size and wealth. So, they legally close of what is supposed to be an open market. Same thing goes for cable companies, radio stations, record companies, movie production companies, energy, computers, utility services and on and on. Deregulation is supposed to be good for the consumer but all it wound up with in California was rolling blackouts and the only good it has provided for cable tv users is rate increases that amount to 4 times the cost to consumer prior to deregulation. Yeah, it works!
Are you friends with the bands, sporting teams, actors, or stagehands of the events you see? Otherwise, if you want to go to see most events live you have to deal with Ticketmaster.
Here is another case of irregular market place practices. Most apartment complexes in Houston enter into agreements with a single cable operator - mine is currently Time Warner who charge :- $35 for basic cable $40 for broadband internet The complex considering moving to has a sole agreement with TVMax/Optel. FOr the same service, they charge $45 basic cable $80 bradband internet What a joke. They obviously pay the complex (or the complex owner) a fee for the right to exclusively provide cable services, and shaft the end user because they do not have a choice. Remember, satellite is not a true competitor in apartments because only liited number have the south facing aspect.
How is a cable company a monopoly? They compete against DirecTV. There are multiple radio companies. While there are not always multiple radio stations with the same format in one market, thats becuase there aren't enough listeners to support to stations. Deregulation lowered consumer electricty rates 6% in January. And the reason CA had blackout is a supply/demand issue combined with a poorly designed system If demand meets supply for electricity, the supplier, a la Enron/Dynegy/etc, knows that they should hold out on selling power becuase the price will move up becuase there is no other supplier to undercut them . You won't have that problem in Texas b/c we have excess capacity here. So if a supplier hesitates to sell electricity, another supplier will jump in. This happens even when supply slightly exceeds demand too. Just be glad there is significant excess supply in TX. Not sure how computers are relevant...unless you are talking about Microsoft and Intel....Microsoft basically abuses its power, though in a lot of ways they are doing things any company should be able to do (i.e, include IE in windows). Its when they take clearly anticompetitive steps (i.e. blackmailing computer manufacturers) they lose it. Thats the problem with monopolies..someone has to keep a close eye on em.... As far as Intel, they are atleast smart enough not to squash AMD so they don't face as much scrutiny from FTC....but chips are getting cheaper all the time, so whats the complaint? Don't know anything about movie production..
Since the inception of cable deregulation, the cost of cable has increased by two-thirds. Additionally, the number of cable providers has been reduced from several hundred to fewer than 10. Besides, satellite and cable are two different things. I only have access to ONE cable company - Time Warner - and I live in the fourth largest city in America. There are only two major satellite providers - DishNetwork and DirecTV. How is that competition? The California debacle is as much the responsibility of energy giants LYING about the costs associated with production to drive up prices. Look at the latest memos that have surfaced. Enron admits to withholding energy supplies as a means to rig the market and says that other major energy companies do it too. Reliant admitted nearly as much as well. The problem with deregulation is that it allows giant companies to own an entire range of services, squeeze out the little guy and control the information and services available to consumers. Media companies can literally manipulate the entire market from production to release. A movie based on a book from a publisher owned by Time Warner can be made by Warner Brothers Pictures, reviewed in Entertainment Weekly and Time Magazine (not to mention a hundred other newspapers and radio stations), promoted on CNN, released into theaters owned by Time Warner, advertised in Time Warner-owned publications (and on Time Warner owned networks), rented and sold in Time Warner-owned stores (i.e. Blockbuster) and broadcast on network stations and cable networks owned by, guess who. By the way, they can also produce the soundtrack using Warner Brothers recording artists, promote and review it in the same places, get airplay on radio stations they own and release it into record stores they own. Of course, they can also provide all the internet services (websites, etc) and promote the hell out of it on AOL which they also own. They can do all of it under one roof and, you know what, the cost of all of these services has not come down since the mergers. It has increased meaning deregulation, which was supposed to be so good for consumers, hasn't been. The market is not expanding. It is shrinking whether it be major computer manufacturers, energy companies or media conglomerates. They are beginning to own everything. You can even trace back the ownership of every major corporation in Europe and America to about 16 people if you look at the strategic partnerships and who owns who. It's scary and it should be for anyone who would like to see legitimate competition in what is supposed to be a free market economy.
i know i just bought concert tickets for the blink182-green day show and basically, the tickets were supposed to be $32. they charged us $3 for 'building facility charge' and $8.50 for 'convienience charge'. im not buyin online anymore ill call by phone from now on.
i just realized how funny the word "Ticketbastard" is. It seems as if it could be a real company. But I also think "Undercutters Pizza" from the Tom Green show is a hilarious name. Its probably just me.
AMEN! TICKETMASTER SUCKS I purchased 2 tickets to woodstock 99 for 500 bucks... shipped them 2nd day delivery and a week later when it's time to get on the bus, no tickets I called... and after waiting on the phone for 4 hours, I finally get to talk to a person only for them to tell me to call fed ex well fed ex didn't freakin have the package, I got on the bus with no tickets and for 3 days HOPED I could get into the damn concert.. didn't know if they would be selling at the gate or what. I finally get to NY at about 4am and the concert starts the next day so I have to hitchhike with my girlfriend who was 5'11 blonde bombshell across NY to the mall where the tickets are now $325 so I spent another 650 dollars on tickets which left me with about 150 dollars. 100 dollars for 3 days isn't bad if you can live without T-Shirts and the like, however, when a 16oz bottle of water costs $4 bucks and NY happens to be in the middle of one of the worst heat waves in state history... well I had to eat freakin crackers out of the machines at the wonderful bus stations for 3 days and came home with nothing but pictures and a horrible sunburn (ran out of sunblock, $30 for more) took me another week to get my $500 back unspeakable hatred towards ticketmaster....
Jeff is right. (I keep saying that! Stop being right, Jeff, dammit. )After all that hoo-ha about trustbusting in the first half of the twentieth century, now we're back to vertical and horizontal integration again... robber barons are back, bad, and better than ever!
