Ticketmaster Customers, Get Ready For Your (Tiny) Class-Action Payout 140
An anonymous reader writes "If you used Ticketmaster's website to buy tickets between October 21, 1999 and October 19, 2011, you're in for a windfall. Well, a $1.50 per ticket order windfall. Because of a proposed class action settlement, Ticketmaster is being forced to credit $1.50 per ticket order (up to 17 orders) to customers because they profited from 'processing fees' without declaring as much. And despite the reparations, Ticketmaster can continue to profit off transactions — they just have to say they're doing so on their website."
Finally, not a scam (Score:4, Funny)
Got this mail today. I was about to delete the mail as another spamscam that got through but the text looked like too much hardwork to have gone in for a phishing attempt or a "Nigerian scam". I lived in the USA 10 years ago and may have purchased something from Ticketmaster.
Re:Finally, not a scam (Score:5, Informative)
actually, it is a scam imho because you do not get 1.50 in cash but you get it as a discount voucher for the next ticket you buy. Ticketmaster doesn't pay you a single cent in CASH and if you stopped using them you're SOL, you're not going to get anything back. Their lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank.
Think of this settlement as just a small mandatory promotion for them since you'll be paying them anyway MUCH more than that for a ticket. The $1.50 discount is insignifiant.
http://consumerist.com/2011/11/you-could-score-150-as-part-of-class-action-suit-against-ticketmaster.html [consumerist.com]
Re:Finally, not a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
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How many years were the lawyers working, and how much would they have received if they had failed? I see this complaint with every class action, and there is SOME merit to it, but people act like the lawyers should do all their work pro-bono.
From the article, it appears to be an 8-year lawsuit, which works out to $2mil per lawyer / firm, per year. How many lawyers were involved?
Its also worth noting that the $20k for the plaintiffs and the 16 mil for attorneys fees look to be separate amounts-- unless I a
Re:Finally, not a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
It's ok for lawyers to make a buck, but there's something wrong with the system when the typical result of a class action lawsuit is the people who were actually wronged making a buck LITERALLY while the lawyers, who were not harmed at all, walk off with more money than the average American makes in a lifetime.
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... there's something wrong with the system
yes
when the typical result of a class action lawsuit is the people who were actually wronged making a buck
How were they wronged, exactly? That the Ticketmaster website did not state that those $1.50 are "processing fees", among the other legal mambo-jumbo that nobody reads? THIS is the problem, not the layers getting paid.
Despite the fact that the layers do get an incentive of having this dragged out for years and collecting their lawyer-ly fees; the whole idea of a class action suit that is based NOT on on fraud, but a formality is a load of BS. Another example of someone playing the system.
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How many years were the lawyers working, and how much would they have received if they had failed? I see this complaint with every class action, and there is SOME merit to it, but people act like the lawyers should do all their work pro-bono.
No, they shouldn't work pro-bono. But to be fair and consistent with the compensation they worked out for the people actually wronged by this action, the lawyers should have received their millions in the form of a bunch of $1.50 ticketmaster credit vouchers.
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While the lawyers do deserve a decent return for their work, do they really deserve more than the actual settlement?
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Seriously, why does this take 8 years?
Re:Finally, not a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
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What pain? It's a coupon. Coupons drive people to buy things. Businesses issue coupons all the time, voluntarily.
If you were a disgruntled Ticketmaster customer, you're left with a coupon. To make TM pay up on their settlement, you have to buy something from them, handing them considerably more than $1.50 in profit.
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But you get the satisfaction of knowing that the first $1.50 of their (now clearly labeled) profit margin is on THEM. That will show em.
The nice thing is that the settlement will just strengthen the convictions of the Anti-Ticketmaster crowd, and we might see more people calling for real change, not the 6 quarters per ticket this lawsuit netted.
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No, in fact there was an interview with him last Friday where he said specifically that they don't think they did anything wrong, and will continue operating as they had been.
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It is worth noting that you can object to the proposed settlement's terms by sending notice of your objection to the lead class council and Ticketmaster's lead council.
Lead Class Council:
Robert J Stein III, Esq
W. Michael Hensley. Esq
Alvarado Smith, APC
1 MacArthur Place, Suite 200
Santa Ana, CA 92707
Steven P. Blonder, Esq
Much Shelist Denenberg Ament & Rubenstein, P.C.
191 North Wacker Dr.
Suite 1800
Chicago, IL 60606
Ticketmaster Council:
Jeff E. Scott, Esq
Greenberg Traurig, LLP
2450 Colorado Ave, Suite 400E
San
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Oh, I missed that you should also send it to the court itself.
Case No. BC304565
Judge Kenneth R. Freeman
Department 64 of the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles
111 North Hill Street, Los Angeles, California 90012
This is no surprise. (Score:1)
The word master is right there in the name. They really do consider ticket buyers their slaves.
I notice (Score:5, Informative)
..that the attorneys are going to get substantially more than $1.50 ($16,500,000 shared between them)
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They did the hard work...
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The "hard work" was being defrauded by Ticketmaster in the first place. The "hard work" is being the victim.
When you are getting paid, and paid very well, for your "hard work" it is never as "hard" as being an innocent victim, no matter how small the victimization.
Let me ask you. You have a choice. You can be ripped off for $1.50 or collect $16million for 8 years of (honestly not that hard) work. I mean, it's not like those lawyers were going down into a coal mine every day or wa
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How about cost-prohibitive? Who has $180,000 to pay for six years of law school? Granted, that's pocket change once you hit $2M/year, but the barrier to entry is high, even for those with great intelligence.
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They took a gamble with schooling; how many law school grads end up with a much less rewarding job?
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Apparently not, They have to manipulate bar exam requirements to limit the numbers and competition has yet to drive prices down.
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More people are doing it. The thing that stops most people from becoming lawyers is the price of joining the club. The intellectual challenge is way over-rated.
Over the years I've had more than one student that couldn't hack an English Lit program who went on to become lawyers, and at least one of them is a very successful lawyer, as he likes to remind everyone at the monthly poker games.
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What sort of argument is that? If the lawyers hadn't run the case, no one would have got anything. This case didn't magically happen.
Oh, and you are more than welcome to opt out of the class and bring your own case against Ticket Master.
Re:I notice (Score:5, Insightful)
No one did get anything.
Except for the lawyers.
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What sort of argument is that? If the lawyers hadn't run the case, no one would have got anything. This case didn't magically happen.
Oh, and you are more than welcome to opt out of the class and bring your own case against Ticket Master.
It's the same argument as "Why, the fella who won the state lotto last week just paid for a ticket and ended up with ten million bucks, if any of you wants to become a millionaire obviously the thing standing in your way is buying a ticket"
The legal profession is so wrought with uncertainty that I have absolutely no envy for those just starting out. Sure, there are *good* lawyers who get *very* well paid for their work, but by and large most (even good) lawyers make jack crap and put in 80+ hour weeks for
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Then go and pay for Georgetown Law schooling for several years, pass the bar exam, and become a lawyer. Easy-peasy, right? If so, I wish you a successful practice and much success; good luck with that.
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Why? I mean, according to you, it takes absolutely no effort, and you consistently get multi-million dollar paydays.
Being Defrauded by TicketMaster wasn't Hard Work (Score:2)
It was easy :-) All I had to do was buy a ticket from a venue that's using TicketMaster as its only ticket sales channel. There wasn't any way to buy my ticket without TM's fees, and there wasn't any way to buy it without paying $8-10 for parking even though I wasn't driving there. (I live about a mile from a venue that's usually a bad traffic jam for concerts, and I'd much rather bike there, not get stuck in traffic, and not need to worry about my substance consumption during the concert :-) Also, one
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What? Are you trying to say that there isn't any work involved in administering a major class action lawsuit?
Furthermore, what "hard work" did it take to be charged a $1.50 processing fee?
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No, I'm saying that there isn't any hard work involved in administering a major class action lawsuit.
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And how can you say that? Have you actually done it? Or are you taking the position that "I don't like it, therefore it can't be hard work?"
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The attorneys should be sued for malpractice. They should've launched an antitrust suit against Ticketmaster instead.
Nobody cares about these complicated $1.50 vouchers when the service charges are $8 and up for a simple online transaction.
Eight years of work (Score:3)
and asking for a fee which will be a around 20% of the settlement. While the number is very large I doubt you or I or much of anyone on this site knows the true costs involved in running a major law firm and maintaining a case over eight years.
So while it is simple to demagogue someone/something/etc because we don't understand it still does not make it right, let alone worthy of being rated insightful on this site. We should not give into our ignorance, let alone jealously, of others simply because of a dol
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and asking for a fee which will be a around 20% of the settlement. While the number is very large I doubt you or I or much of anyone on this site knows the true costs involved in running a major law firm and maintaining a case over eight years.
So while it is simple to demagogue someone/something/etc because we don't understand it still does not make it right, let alone worthy of being rated insightful on this site. We should not give into our ignorance, let alone jealously, of others simply because of a dollar amount. It cheapen us and the very work we do. I am quite certain you can find any number of people on the street who would be aghast at how much "some" people get paid to work on computers and that attitude has the same founding.
You are so right, I did an informal poll just last weekend:
Who would you, John Q Public, be more sympathetic to?
a) Someone whose sole job it is to operate a computer for the purpose of creating and maintaining communication services to every aspect of life around the globe.
b) Someone whose sole job it is to go into an already overloaded court of law, and plead on the behalf of "victims" who were the target of illegal business practices and spend 8 years crafting a settlem
Re:I notice (Score:5, Insightful)
Then they should take a stack of coupons as their share, since that's what the class members are getting.... coupons off future ticketmaster ticket purchases.
Hey, if cash is good enough for the lawyers, it's good enough for the class members too!
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Would you be willing to take whatever product your company makes in payment, instead of cash?
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I am generally in favor of megacorps getting hit with huge penalties. We don't do near enough of that. How else can they be deterred from trying the kind of b.s. Ticketmaster has pulled over the years? If they start whining about the size of a penalty, I would point out that judging from the amount of compensation they pay their executives, they obviously are not hurting for money, and I will never believe otherwise until executive compensation changes.
Instead, we bitch and moan about banks, telecoms,
USA only? (Score:2)
Re:USA only? (Score:5, Informative)
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Plus you can only use the $1.50 credit vouchers two at a time, saving you a maximum of $3 off the extortionate price of a ticket. Seriously, does anyone apart for the lawyers in a class action suit walk away with fistfuls of cold hard cash? Offer to pay the lawyers in $3-off-your-next-purchase credit notes and see whether they go for it...
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A maximum of $3 off the $20 processing fee! Awesome!
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In other news Ticket Master processing fees (now fully declared in the T&Cs that no one reads) have gone up by $1.50.
I live in a world... (Score:1, Insightful)
No wonder our financial system is nearly in ruins.
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Just about exactly what I was going to post.
Seriously, what did people think ticketmaster's business model was?
Re:I live in a world... (Score:4, Informative)
Just about exactly what I was going to post.
Seriously, what did people think ticketmaster's business model was?
You would think that it is to provide an optional sales service for convenience that people would choose to pay for, and you'd be wrong. While the email option is convenient, it turns out that they demand exclusive deals with venues, so that you have to pay their "ticket fee" when buying at the door as well. Mind you, ticketmaster has *nothing* to do with door sales except for receiving their racket money (source: a good buddy works at one of these venues), and you don't even get a ticket. Venues still announce cover charge without the fees.
As I see it, if there's no way you can avoid paying the fee even at the doors it's hard to claim that they're tied up to a cost for a service. When I get a goddamn rubber stamp at the entrance in exchange for cash, I don't expect to have to pay a fee to some third party. Ticketmaster don't even do anything to inhibit illegal ticket scalping - which would have been a nice service, and real added value for all concertgoers. If they did I'd be less annoyed with paying their fee.
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There's a few things y'all are not getting here on both sides of the issue:
As far as the venues: Ticketmaster created the ticketing systems that those venues use. The small surcharge you pay at the window reflects that. In most (not all but most) cases the tickets are cheaper at the window and don't show the TM fees.
As far as what the case was about: Ticketmaster adds all sorts of fees to the end of a ticket purchase. They are all itemized kind of like your phone bill and similar to your phone bill they
Re:I live in a world... (Score:5, Interesting)
Specifically, TicketMaster (falsely) declared that a given charge covered the cost of a specific processing option, when in fact it was simply added to improve the margin on the transaction. Making false claims about goods or services involved in a transaction is, y'know, "fraud"(which, incidentally, is in large part why our financial system is in ruins)... Had they simply not engaged in fraud, and not misrepresented the nature of the fee, they would have been free and clear...
Re:I live in a world... (Score:5, Funny)
I just checked a recent ticket and it does indeed declare that charge correctly now. The 4 items mentioned are:
1. Cost of performance
2. Cost of venue
3. <illegible smudge>
4. Profit!
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If memory serves, there was a similar suit against one or more of the big telcos a while back, the telco had been padding bills with fees name
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I thought everyone just assumed that all of the items in the breakdown were Ticketmaster's "Because We Can" fees?
It get's better.... (Score:5, Informative)
They also are allowed to force that fee (Now $2.50) even if you buy the tickets at the venue.
It's why I dont go to see shows anymore. Horribly overpriced, everyone has to get an additional profit fee in there, and you end up with crap seats unless you pay 4 figures.
Screw it, it's not worth it anymore. And from the performance of the band at the last 3 concerts I was at, they suck live anyways. Beastie Boys utterly stunk live.
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Ticket Alternative has been around for almost a decade. [atdc.org]
If you don't like one Ticket Processor's practices, okay. Then don't go to shows at venues that use that Ticket Processor. Capitalism might be able to fix this yet.
For what it's worth, I have gone to countless shows w/o paying a dime to Ticket Master. That doesn't mean I don't pay fees, but the ones I pay are a lot more reasonable ($10 plus fees with Ticket Master vs $3-5 fees elsewhere). And the option of
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Don't go to seated shows. If it's not general admission, it's not worth going to.
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Are they? You'll know they tickets are overpriced if the event doesn't get close to selling out. If it sells out, then the tickets might actually have been too cheap--"below the going rate determined by supply and demand." [wikipedia.org]
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I've upped my concert standards, so up yours. There is plenty of good music to be heard for short money: if you care, seek it out; if not, that's fine, just skip it. But don't justify your rejection of all musical shows under the banner that the very very highest end shows are overpriced.
Dear Suckers, (Score:2)
Had we embraced the glorious truths of tort reform, you could have been spared having to receive such an insultingly small offer at all, and we could have gotten away with the entire thing.
Ticketmaster can continue to profit (Score:2)
"And despite the reparations, Ticketmaster can continue to profit off transactions — they just have to say they're doing so on their website."
No, really? A private enterprise is allowed to profit off its business provided it does so in a manner that is not fraudulent? Shocking!
Re:Ticketmaster can continue to profit (Score:5, Interesting)
Well the problem with this "$1.50 refund" is that it's actually $1.50 off your next purchase with ticketmaster".
Read them email to the end. I got this email a few days ago, and as far as I can tell this is legalized highway robbery. For the low, low price of $16.5 million to the lawyers who took up the cause, Ticketmaster gets free publicity and additional repeat customers, while not having to pay their customers anything. There is so absolutely little for the average customer to have gained from this, there might have not even been a lawsuit to begin with.
These sorts of cases where the lawyers representing the public are well compensated need to require that a cash payment be put in to a fund to be claimed against. Reading that email from Ticketmaster was a waste of my time.
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Same here. I'm 41 and back in my concert going days I saw Eric Clapton, The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top all for $30 each. My adult daughter was out in California and wanted to go to a Janet Jackson concert but doesn't have a credit card. She sent me a check and I bought the tickets from you know who. Never again. I can't understand why concerts haven't been killed off by this crap. I can't imagine paying $200 to see a live performance that sounds half as good as the CD. And the worst part is knowi
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I'm sure they'll find some way to blame it on file sharers.
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Try seeing The Who or Clapton for $30 these days.
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What is justice? They charged you more for processing fees in order to profit from the sales. Now their customers can get their ticket service free of charge for the amount of times they got screwed, they no get it gratis and TicketMaster loses some amount of money. This nullifies their illegal profit.
This is a punishment for TicketMaster, not a "cash please" thing. Be lucky that the system doesn't always charge insane fees in the millions for a small processing fee. $1.50 USD is seriously not a massive amo
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$1.50 USD is seriously not a massive amount of money and in this capitalistic world; you could have always bought them somewhere else.
This is the real problem though. In MOST cases, you cannot "just buy them somewhere else". Ticketmaster has a virtual monopoly on ticket sales for most major venues. You cannot buy tickets any other way, including directly from the venue box office. This forces consumers to pay their exorbitant prices & fees, regardless of how many they tack on. The only real other option is just to not go see the show.
Re:Ticketmaster can continue to profit (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a punishment for TicketMaster, not a "cash please" thing. Be lucky that the system doesn't always charge insane fees in the millions for a small processing fee. $1.50 USD is seriously not a massive amount of money and in this capitalistic world; you could have always bought them somewhere else.
This is not a punishment.
People now have the choice to (A) not get the refund or (B) pay TicketMaster to get the refund.
Unless you consider "slightly less profit on customers you might have otherwise lost" as punishment.
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There is so absolutely little for the average customer to have gained from this
That's true. But to be fair, compare it to how much they were skimming off of each "transaction fee".
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You could always file a Class Action Lawsuit against the Class Action Lawyers?
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wah? (Score:2)
And despite the reparations, Ticketmaster can continue to profit off transactions â" they just have to say they're doing so on their website.
That's all we can really ask for, besides actually getting back the ill-gotten gains, and having any unclaimed ill-gotten gains reclaimed and put to some good use, which I note hasn't happened. (Operational costs would take care of making it costly as opposed to simply unprofitable.)
I'm out (Score:2)
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no one really agrees to it. You either do it, or dont get the tickets. There are many other fees already stacked on, and if there was a $1.50 fee for service , plus a $1.50 fee for tickets, plus a $1.50 fee for using the web site, plus a $1.50 fee for picking up the tickets, eventually people would notice, so they buried one of them without telling anyone that they were paying fluff. I havent used ticketmaster in a long time because of this... when the face value is half the cost, something is wrong. I call
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I received the email regarding this class action and, well, it's stupid. people knew how much they paid and what they were paying for and agreed to it. this whole thing is unnecessary.
From my perspective, it's dishonest when a ticket prices is advertised as £25, but there are so many fees that to actually get a ticket you end up paying £32.50.
Ticketmaster pay the venue for an exclusivity deal, which means the only option is to buy tickets from Ticketmaster, or the venue itself (which is often very impractical, or almost impossible). The fees make no sense -- buying four tickets often means paying four postage fees, four service fees and four booking fees.
Here's [guardian.co.uk] an article in
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One thing that Ticketmaster started doing a year or two ago was disclosing each additional fee/charge on their tickets, showing clearly which were theirs and which were the venues. The venues freaked out. However, the transparency was enlightening: of those 7.50 in extra charges, 2 might be Ticketmasters' and the rest extra fees added by the venue, who are *already* getting paid for hosting the show in the first place!
Double Standard? (Score:1)
I lived in Orlando, Florida about the time the Orlando Magic were becoming the next big thing. Ticketmaster was in charge of ticketing at the "O-rena". Funny thing is, the city of Orlando passed an ordinance that individuals selling tickets and charging more than $1 over face value could be arrested for scalping. Ticketmaster however could charge their "convenience fee" without any fear of retribution.
Nice (Score:2)
I got my money from the eBay lawsuit! (Score:4, Funny)
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Both of those are better than what I got. My check from the eBay settlement was a whopping $0.02.
Never mind Ticketmaster (Score:1)
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Scalping is only illegal based on a technicality.
Tickets are a "right to rent a space" - so the customer doesn't own a ticket -- the ticket represents a "rental."
If we follow the LAWS of this nation; "The Consumer is Sovereign." Meaning; I can buy a car and sell it, and I can run it off a cliff if it doesn't damage someone else's property or cause harm -- it is MY car. Even on that concept, our CorpGov has put limits, because you cannot buy and sell more than a couple cars a year in most states -- obviously
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TicketMaster sickened me from the beginning. (Score:3)
If it were MERELY a way to get tickets online-- then charging a Buck for the "service" would be fine. But it's really a profit-gobbling obscenity, that creates a monopoly for Ticket prices.
We even have laws against scalping now -- which wouldn't be necessary if tickets were just SOLD at the gate, or there were enough concerts/large venue performances that scarcity weren't a problem.
But TicketMaster in essence is a Monopoly on top of local Monopolies. You aren't going to watch a Braves baseball game unless you are at the Braves stadium or their competitors -- this goes the same for watching a concert; reasonably, nobody is going to drive 200 miles to the next concert venue for that particular artist.
>> So either there will have to be a regulated Limit on prices -- because TicketMaster can fix them, or there has to be no TICKETMASTER at all. The could be sold off to all the local companies that sell tickets as a "clearinghouse" since that's the useful function they serve.
When most of the profits go to the middleman -- there is ALWAYS a problem in a system.
opt out (Score:2)
I got this story beat... (Score:3)
Was done before on South Park (Score:2)
Wonder if you actually get the $1.50? (Score:2)
I just got a check for some odd EBay related class action. Total reward to me was something like $1.60, but my total disbursement was a whopping $0.08 after I assume "processing and legal fees". Just to be irritating and get my money's worth, I thought I should call up the contact number and ask lots of questions so I get my money's worth from the lawyers.
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This is one instance where I don't really care that the lawyers are cleaning up, because it's at TM's expense.
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But.. but... how could you NOT want your Weekly TicketAlert?!? It's Yours!
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That said, you're right, it really shouldn't be surprising to anyone that Ticketmaster is trying to make $$ by charging you more for the convenience. Sometimes you pay almost as much for the privilege of using Ticketmaster as you do for the damned show itself!
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Presumably they make their money by either increasing the cost of the ticket due to a value add that their competition does not have and we desire, or they make their money by buying in bulk and offering their customers a lower cost option than buying from the competition. One of those two is how most other businesses make a profit.
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Also if you do not use your $1.50 coupon then they will give $1.50 to a charity.
The foundation for starving ticketmaster executives?
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Airlines tack on a baggage fee, but at least I have a choice on whether to use that service. Airlines are probably a bad example because they also have a