First of all I would like to say that I have no idea if Gig-goer's even makes sense. But basically for you rather silly people out there it means someone who goes to gigs.
This morning when I was thinking about something to write about I looked at my bookmarks bar on Safari and saw “Ticketmaster” and suddenly the idea hit me to write about how much booking fees annoy me. And possibly millions of other people who go to gigs/concerts/events around the world.
As an example to prove my point I’m going to go to Ticketmaster and pick an artist who I could possibly go and see at some point this year or next. For the sake of not being able to think of anyone that great I’m going with “Trivium” who are playing a show at Barrowland next year in March. To start off with a ticket costs £16.50. This is a reasonable price for Barrowland because it’s not a huge venue and its standing only. I’ve selected 1 ticket and after going through the near impossible CAPTCHA checks I’m taken to the page where I select my postage method. At this point it displays the service charge and postage costs with the service charge being £2.75 and postage being £2.50. That means that the £16.50 ticket I want to buy actually costs me £21.75 which is £5.25 more expensive than I thought. £5.25 might not seem like a lot but it’s almost one third of the price. As an actual percentage it’s 32% more expensive than I thought. So it’s as near as makes no difference 1/3 more expensive than I thought which is quite annoying.
I don’t understand where the hell they get £2.50 for postage from because it’s standard delivery. Not special delivery which would cost me around £5. I don’t where they get their stamps from but someone is being ripped off. And that someone is us, the gig-goers.
Let’s try another artist, someone who will be playing at a larger venue, for example, U2 at Hampden Park.
For this event the only tickets left are £150 each which is a fucking rip off in itself before we even get to the service charge which is £13.50. Because this is a large event I am being forced to choose the special delivery postage which is £4.95. So the total is now standing at £168.45. when you consider paying £150 for a ticket I'm sure that if you can afford that £15 pound won’t be too much of a reach into the wallet but that isn’t the point. The point is that you have to go through pages of information and filling in details to find out at the end that your tickets are costing you at least 10% more than you thought.
Maybe everyone should take notice of the Kilimanjaro Live event organisers. They are the people behind Sonisphere, the rock/metal festival touring across Europe this year. A weekend ticket cost £67.00. With no booking fees. I don’t know why they chose to leave out the booking fees but there is an article in Classic Rock magazine that explains why.
I don’t know how well I have put across my point, probably not very well at all, but what I am trying to say is that booking fees are ridiculously expensive and just an excuse for ticket sellers to make a tasty profit. When booking through Tickets Scotland the booking fee for larger events peaks at £1.50 from what I have seen. Even though it is still a booking fee it is nowhere near as ridiculous as £13.50
So people maybe if you complain a little and tell a friend to do so we might get somewhere eventually. Postage costs also need to be brought down, I mean how dear can a stamp really be?
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