Live Nation/Ticketmaster is buying Congress | Hacker News Reader

Live Nation/Ticketmaster is buying Congress

pluralistic.net

34 pointsjustinclift8 comments

Just going to pile onto the Ticketmaster/Live Nation hate here.

I recently bought tickets to a Blink-182 concert in July. Tickets were advertised as about $90/ticket, so I got one for me and my wife, so the bill was $180. Then there was an extra $32 "service charge", which I didn't enjoy but also kind of expected.

The thing that really pissed me off was that there was another $3 "transaction fee" on top of the rest. I have no idea what the hell that was. I don't know why that couldn't be rolled into the "service charge", and for that matter I do not know why they couldn't just roll this into the price of the tickets.

It just feels like Ticketmaster survives primarily on false advertising and upcharges. I have no idea if there's going to be another charge later for this concert.

I guess the solution is to not go to concerts but that seems kind of depressing.

Ticket reseller Stubhub experimented with price transparency ("all-in pricing") and discovered (unsurprisingly) that it reduced ticket sales.[1]

That's why we're stuck with junky surcharges and price dripping - to avoid price transparency that might reduce sales.

[1] https://money.com/stubhub-fees-all-in-ticket-prices/

It's efficacy wasn't ever something I questioned, I didn't think they would continue to do it if it wasn't effective.

I'm sure there's some psychology to "once you're in the checkout phase you'll just pay the price even if you're annoyed", but it still feels pretty dishonest to me, and borderline false-advertising.

It's simply a fuck you tax because they can, as they've monopolized the space

Yeah, I just think there should be a mandate for transparent pricing. I don't think that Ticketmaster/Livenation should be allowed to do the bait and switch pricing by tacking on an extra $30 + $3 charge at the end so that their prices initially appear a bit lower.

And I also think that government should break them up.

FTC Proposes Rule to Ban Junk Fees https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/10/...

The other part of this, which I believe California’s law that goes into effect in recent days addresses to some extent, is the question of why it’s legal to advertise this hidden rate to you like that in the first place. I just planned an outing for my family and I sent them four Airbnb’s to pick from. We live in the States, but I sent them four airbnb.com.au links with prices in AUD. Why? Because Australia, a country with decent consumer protection laws, legally mandates that the price you are advertised to must include all taxes and fees. People who are advocates of capitalism should absolutely be in favor of similar legislation in the States. How can you have a free market if the actual price of a product is not transparent? Any attempt to not do this is blatantly anti capitalistic

I hope they can afford the service fees.

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