On Monday evening, I attended the Los Angeles Staples Center performance of the American Idol summer concert series. When ordering the tickets online, I was drawn to the extensive and costly list of extra fees and charges imposed by Ticketmaster.
There was a $2.50 “delivery charge” for enabling me to download the ticket, printed on my paper and using my ink and printer. Not even a started theater ticket was necessary.
There was also a $5.10 “order processing fee, “which I was unsure what that was. Was this to cover the credit card merchant interchange fee? If so, Ticketmaster might be in violation of its electronic payment agreement, because they are precluded from charging an added fee to cover the Visa and MasterCard payments.
Then, there was a $12.95 “convenience charge.”
In total, there were $20.55 in added fees piled onto the $68.50 original ticket price, a 30% added fee.
Unlike Visa and Mastercard’s nearly 100 separate interchange fee schedules, Ticketmaster has another difference. Consumers are not forced to buy tickets from the leading online ticketing service. I could have chosen not to use Ticketmaster, but as an Ecommerce business owner and retailer, like millions of others, we are all forced to accept Visa and MasterCard and its 80% market power and monopoly for we will be out of business.
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