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Booking Fees

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Butts

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We often hear comment about the extra charges levied by The Trainline etc for purchase of Railway Tickets all be it only a pound or so.

What about a far bigger racket that of buying theatre/concert tickets where even if you are picking the tickets up from the venue a charge sometimes applies.

Who exactly is coining this cash the venue or the promoter and what is it for?
 
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Lrd

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We often hear comment about the extra charges levied by The Trainline etc for purchase of Railway Tickets all be it only a pound or so.

What about a far bigger racket that of buying theatre/concert tickets where even if you are picking the tickets up from the venue a charge sometimes applies.

Who exactly is coining this cash the venue or the promoter and what is it for?
More than likely the venue keeps it, and it's probably so they can have a staff member there so you can collect them.
 

Lampshade

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It's like this at a lot of theatres where you can only book using Ticketmaster or similar. They're not booking fees, they're compulsory surcharges.
 

SS4

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It's like this at a lot of theatres where you can only book using Ticketmaster or similar. They're not booking fees, they're compulsory surcharges.

That's pretty much it and the nature of ticket sales where some can be sold out in minutes demands online booking.

The last tickets I bought (Delain at the HMV Institute) were £13 cash or £20 if paying by card online.
 

Butts

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It had even extended to Cinema all be it for a nominal sum.

However Cineworld (in scotland at least) removed the booking fees and made it CHEAPER to purchase online- 10% less.

Perhaps the Theatres and Concert Venues could follow this example ?
 

michael769

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Traditionally performers pay venues only for the right to use the space. If the performer wants the venue to sell tickets the venue charges an extra fee for this, and this fee is usually payable by the audience, this is the booking fee. Obviously they can use alternative ticketing providers such as ticketmaster instead, something that has become more common in recent decades, when major events have tended to rely much less on on the door ticket sales?

The performer (or promoter or agent) gets the entire ticket price - with the booking fee being the ticket sellers cut for the service of printing, selling and administering the tickets.

The reason the fee was not included was because different channels incurred different costs for the ticketing agent. Often on the door tickets incurred no fee as they cost next to nothing to administer and it was in venues interests to encourage full houses as it made the venue more attractive for performers.

Obviously these days it would be better Customer service to offer inclusive prices, with discounts where appropriate, but as such surcharges allow prices to be advertised that are lower than what the consumer ends up paying - a form of confusion marketing - there is no incentive to do this, other than if you wished to promote your business as being customer service oriented. As there is no effective competition (mostly if you want to see band X you have to use their agent) there is scant benefit to gaining a better reputation among ticket buyers.
 
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island

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As long as there is a way that the surcharge can be avoided, they can advertise the lower price.

Back in Ireland, if tickets were sold exclusively through Ticketmaster, there was one Ticketmaster outlet which charged no fees if you paid cash, for this reason.
 

LE Greys

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Classic confusion marketing!

No worse than £99:99 becoming 'less than £100'.

Maybe there should be a 10% rule, so that things can only be advertised as 'less than' something if they are 10% or more less. The same for tickets, they can only be advertised as 'starting from' a low price if at least 10% are available at that price - and probably if that price is only 50% of the average price.
 

SS4

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No worse than £99:99 becoming 'less than £100'.

Maybe there should be a 10% rule, so that things can only be advertised as 'less than' something if they are 10% or more less. The same for tickets, they can only be advertised as 'starting from' a low price if at least 10% are available at that price - and probably if that price is only 50% of the average price.

I'd also say that you can only use percentages if your sample size is over 1000. Below that one must state the actual number.
For example if LM decide to advertise the number of Advance tickets then if there are 1000 at £6 on any given week (seems the most suitable time period) then they may say x% of £6 tickets available but if there are only 750 then it'd be 750 tickets available at £6 single (OT: Can we have a Great Escape soon please LM? ;))
 
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