Consumers Association about to kick ticket agencies' asses

Long-running complaints about ticket agencies are going to come to a head this week, with the Consumer Association telling them to justify their add-on costs or face a formal referral to the Competition & Markets Authority:

"Consumers can often feel ripped-off with widely varying and often high ticket fees, so we've put companies on notice to step up and Play Fair on Ticket Fees," said Which? executive director, Richard Lloyd, quoting the name of the consumer body's ongoing ticket fee campaign. "They need to justify their fees and treat their customers fairly, or we will take our evidence to the Competition and Markets Authority."

The weasel-livered explanation offered for charging people to print out their own tickets on their own printers in their own homes is, apparently, the agencies need to check the tickets when they're presented at the venue. Righto.

Will an end to unfair credit and debit card fees make concerts cheaper?

Good festive news: the government is proposing a ban on made-up credit card processing fees. Companies like Ticketmaster will still be able to charge credit card fees, but not the silly, made-up mark-ups they currently do.

Bad festive news: this won't stop Ticketmaster making up other fees, and slapping arbitrary sums onto those.

In effect, then: from the end of 2012, you'll be ripped off on a different line of your gig ticket bill.

"and that will be a $750million booking fee, please"

Ticketmaster has been spun off - or, perhaps, thrown out of - its parent company. It'll go independent in 2009, carrying three quarters of a billion dollars in debt.

It's not, perhaps, the best time to be trying to set up a debt-laden company that doesn't really do anything much beyond act as a middleman. Apparently they've got lots of ideas about how they can pay off the debt and thrive - we suspect the business plan includes the words "bigger booking fees".

At last: An MP asks about booking fees

It's taken god knows how many months of people trying to make the point whenever the government experienced a fit of the vapours about people selling tickets on eBay, but finally, an MP has raised the issue of booking fees with the DTI:

Labour's Ben Chapman said costs added to the ticket's face value should be spelt out, as should alternatives to buying through an agency.

In the House of Commons, Mr Chapman said huge demand had put venues and agencies in a "powerful position".

Trade and Industry Minister Margaret Hodge said the industry was examined by the Office of Fair Trading in 2005.

She added that current regulations would be strengthened by the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive in 2008 which would require consumers to be able to make an "informed purchasing decision".

Of course, this is way to weak - it's not that people don't know they're being hung upside and shaken until their pockets are emptied; what Hodge is offering is the opportunity to be mugged in an informed way: "I'm now going through your pockets with the intention of removing any cash; I'll also be taking your credit cards, and later in this session I shall threaten to poke a knife into your kidneys unless you reveal the PIN number..."

What the law should say - and be explicit about - is that the booking fee, if charged at all, must only cover any extra legitimate administrative costs incurred - so instead of a percentage of ticket face value, it would have to be a fixed price, and one levied per transaction rather than per ticket; the price of booking online would have to reflect the reduced costs of processing, and so on. It's not information that we need, it's fairness.

Kaiser Chiefs fight booking fees by, erm, calling them something else

An email pings into our inbox from our old friends the Kaiser Chiefs, reminding us they're about to play a series of gigs in the UK:

Back in the UK, our shows at Hyde Park London (Sun 17th June) and Harewood House Leeds (Sat 16th June) as part of Wireless are selling out fast, to avoid disappointment book your tickets now if you haven't already, you can get them direct from us right here to avoid wasting money on big booking fees and avoiding the touts.

The link is to their website, where they're indeed selling Hyde Park and Harewood House tickets without a booking fee. There is, however, a "Payment Processing Fee" of £3.50 a ticket, or a hefty 8.75 per cent.

Even more bemusingly, if this payment is to cover the cost of the payment being processed, why is it per ticket, rather than per transaction?