Ticketmaster Settlement

JebRand

Ticketmaster Forced to Give Back Some of the Money They Stole From You
Everybody gets a $1.50 refund per ticket thanks to a class action settlement

http://pitchfork.com/news/44802-ticketm ... st+News%29

IMO this settlement is ridiculous for several reasons, here are a couple:
1) it doesn't resolve the issue
2) it puts the onus on the consumer who was screwed in the first place

If justice was to be truly served they should penalized Ticketmaster from applying fees (or limiting the fees) for a determined amount of time.

On a side note, the PJ20 book (I believe in chapter 1995) captures the details of the their involvement with the Ticketmaster battle. Interesting how ahead of the time they were and how those events played into this settlement by exposing fees to the consumer.

Deadpool

It's kind of crappy in my opinion. Yes, they have to live up to this settlement however they are still not adjusting the future fees on new orders and you can only use two discounts per order. It would have been much more fair to let you use the whole (cause I have sure I have done way more than 17 transactions with Ticketmaster over the last 11 years) immediately.

Kel Varnsen

JebRand wrote:

If justice was to be truly served they should penalized Ticketmaster from applying fees (or limiting the fees) for a determined amount of time.

Why should ticket master not be allowed to charge service fees? Did you try buying tickets from Tenclub for the Canadian tour this year or any previous show from the past few years? It was pretty bad, which indicates to me that it costs a ton of money to maintain the computer infrastructure to be able to have a site that sells tickets and is dependable enough to work whenever it needs to. If ticket master doesn't charge for the service of doing that where are they exactly supposed to get the money to pay for their systems. Or would you prefer to go back to the days where the only way you could buy tickets to a show was if you lined up outside of an arena?

ewokpelts

this is designed to benefit tm/livenation more than the consumer. the 2 codes per transaction means you have to make 9 transactions to get the full benefit!
and IF you actually shipped tickets via ups, you HAVE to use the $5 code ON UPS ticket shipping!

JebRand

Kel Varnsen wrote:

JebRand wrote:

If justice was to be truly served they should penalized Ticketmaster from applying fees (or limiting the fees) for a determined amount of time.

Why should ticket master not be allowed to charge service fees? Did you try buying tickets from Tenclub for the Canadian tour this year or any previous show from the past few years? It was pretty bad, which indicates to me that it costs a ton of money to maintain the computer infrastructure to be able to have a site that sells tickets and is dependable enough to work whenever it needs to. If ticket master doesn't charge for the service of doing that where are they exactly supposed to get the money to pay for their systems. Or would you prefer to go back to the days where the only way you could buy tickets to a show was if you lined up outside of an arena?

I never said they should not be allowed to charge fees. My point was that instead of claimants having to spend a lot of time and effort for reimbursement, I would have like the settlement to penalize Ticketmaster on their current sales by limiting service charges to a fixed amount for a period of time (e.g. $1 max service charge for the next year).

I realize that this suggestion has its flaws and will never happen as the objective of the settlement is to reimburse those making claims and Ticketmaster won't sign up for something that will hit their projections for their upcoming greed.

spearhead

Why should ticket master not be allowed to charge service fees? Did you try buying tickets from Tenclub for the Canadian tour this year or any previous show from the past few years? It was pretty bad, which indicates to me that it costs a ton of money to maintain the computer infrastructure to be able to have a site that sells tickets and is dependable enough to work whenever it needs to. If ticket master doesn't charge for the service of doing that where are they exactly supposed to get the money to pay for their systems. Or would you prefer to go back to the days where the only way you could buy tickets to a show was if you lined up outside of an arena?[/quote]


Nobody said they can't charge whatever service fees they want to charge...they can charge fees up your ass, and they will, the penalty here was because they FUCKING LIED about those fees, and did not disclose that they were the ones charging them...

Kel Varnsen

spearhead wrote:

Nobody said they can't charge whatever service fees they want to charge...they can charge fees up your ass, and they will, the penalty here was because they FUCKING LIED about those fees, and did not disclose that they were the ones charging them...

I get what you are saying but logically I am not sure what that is such a big deal. I mean sure it is nice to see a ticketmaster cut of the ticket price being broken out on the ticket. But at the same time the cut that the band or the venue or the promoter is taking isn't broken out as a line item on the ticket. So really why should the company that sells the tickets be held to a higher standard?

benjs

Kel Varnsen wrote:

spearhead wrote:

Nobody said they can't charge whatever service fees they want to charge...they can charge fees up your ass, and they will, the penalty here was because they FUCKING LIED about those fees, and did not disclose that they were the ones charging them...

I get what you are saying but logically I am not sure what that is such a big deal. I mean sure it is nice to see a ticketmaster cut of the ticket price being broken out on the ticket. But at the same time the cut that the band or the venue or the promoter is taking isn't broken out as a line item on the ticket. So really why should the company that sells the tickets be held to a higher standard?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Ticketmaster is acting as a broker when they sell tickets on behalf of an artist, and as such, are required to disclose their presence and cut of the fees when their services are being used.

100 Pacer

benjs wrote:

Kel Varnsen wrote:

spearhead wrote:

Nobody said they can't charge whatever service fees they want to charge...they can charge fees up your ass, and they will, the penalty here was because they FUCKING LIED about those fees, and did not disclose that they were the ones charging them...

I get what you are saying but logically I am not sure what that is such a big deal. I mean sure it is nice to see a ticketmaster cut of the ticket price being broken out on the ticket. But at the same time the cut that the band or the venue or the promoter is taking isn't broken out as a line item on the ticket. So really why should the company that sells the tickets be held to a higher standard?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Ticketmaster is acting as a broker when they sell tickets on behalf of an artist, and as such, are required to disclose their presence and cut of the fees when their services are being used.

On behalf of the promoter, not the artist, if you want to get technical.

Kel Varnsen

benjs wrote:

Kel Varnsen wrote:

spearhead wrote:

Nobody said they can't charge whatever service fees they want to charge...they can charge fees up your ass, and they will, the penalty here was because they FUCKING LIED about those fees, and did not disclose that they were the ones charging them...

I get what you are saying but logically I am not sure what that is such a big deal. I mean sure it is nice to see a ticketmaster cut of the ticket price being broken out on the ticket. But at the same time the cut that the band or the venue or the promoter is taking isn't broken out as a line item on the ticket. So really why should the company that sells the tickets be held to a higher standard?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Ticketmaster is acting as a broker when they sell tickets on behalf of an artist, and as such, are required to disclose their presence and cut of the fees when their services are being used.

But their fee is just one part of the total ticket cost, so is there any logical reason why there part has to be broken out but the part that say goes to pay for the venue, or the promoters take isn't?

100 Pacer

Kel Varnsen wrote:

But their fee is just one part of the total ticket cost, so is there any logical reason why there part has to be broken out but the part that say goes to pay for the venue, or the promoters take isn't?

When you purchase a ticket from Ticketmaster, you're essentially seeing what the promoter is charging you for admission once you deduct the Ticketmaster fees off the price of the ticket. The artist has nothing to do with the transaction. The artist's fees are negotiated with the promoter and the tour is "sold" to the promoter, who then pays the artist their negotiated cut of ticket sales.

Kel Varnsen

100 Pacer wrote:

Kel Varnsen wrote:

But their fee is just one part of the total ticket cost, so is there any logical reason why there part has to be broken out but the part that say goes to pay for the venue, or the promoters take isn't?

When you purchase a ticket from Ticketmaster, you're essentially seeing what the promoter is charging you for admission once you deduct the Ticketmaster fees off the price of the ticket. The artist has nothing to do with the transaction. The artist's fees are negotiated with the promoter and the tour is "sold" to the promoter, who then pays the artist their negotiated cut of ticket sales.

So if the artist is getting their negotiated cut of ticket sales from the promoter like you say (and the venue is probably getting something similar) why don't those cuts show up. If I buy a $80 ticket with a $8 service charge why doens't anyone tell me how much of that remaining $72 the rest of the parties involved are each getting. Like I said it seems that one group is being held to a higher standard.

100 Pacer

Kel Varnsen wrote:

100 Pacer wrote:

Kel Varnsen wrote:

But their fee is just one part of the total ticket cost, so is there any logical reason why there part has to be broken out but the part that say goes to pay for the venue, or the promoters take isn't?

When you purchase a ticket from Ticketmaster, you're essentially seeing what the promoter is charging you for admission once you deduct the Ticketmaster fees off the price of the ticket. The artist has nothing to do with the transaction. The artist's fees are negotiated with the promoter and the tour is "sold" to the promoter, who then pays the artist their negotiated cut of ticket sales.

So if the artist is getting their negotiated cut of ticket sales from the promoter like you say (and the venue is probably getting something similar) why don't those cuts show up. If I buy a $80 ticket with a $8 service charge why doens't anyone tell me how much of that remaining $72 the rest of the parties involved are each getting. Like I said it seems that one group is being held to a higher standard.

You're not paying the price of admission for the band or the band's promoter or Ticketmaster to open up their books and reveal their private business dealings with regards to booking fees and the band's revenues or the promoter's revenues or Ticketmaster's revenues. You're paying the price of admission to experience the event in question. It's up to the consumer to decide whether he/she wants to fork over the price of admission. That's all. Ticketmaster's ticket "fees" as they are presented to the consumer is the issue being argued.