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Ticketmaster Customers, Get Ready For Your (Tiny) Class-Action Payout
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."
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.
..that the attorneys are going to get substantially more than $1.50 ($16,500,000 shared between them)
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
I've used ticketmaster for events in the UK and Australia. Do I get anything? Or is it just the USA?
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It probably doesn't serve your sense of victimhood as well; but if you take a look at the complaint you'll notice that something rather different is the case:
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...
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!
Yeah. I don't know exactly when they changed the language(probably not long after the filing, if not before); but apparently the previous wording asserted that various charges were actually correlated with various costs(notably 3rd party ones, like a UPS shipping upgrade or a venue charge), rather than just being a somewhat curious itemization of "Because we can".
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 named to look like FCC service charges or government imposed taxes of some sort that were simply sneaky additions to the base price of the line. They got smacked down. Nothing illegal about charging a price that includes profit; but charging a price that claims to be cost recovery; but is actually something else, is simple fraud.
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.
moox. for a new generation.
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 the venue directly to avoid the nonsense, and if I cant get around it, I contact the performer and let them know how I feel. It may not help, but it might.
With all that money at least 11 tickets I'll be able to buy 1 concert beer :-)
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 an article in a British newspaper complaining about it. I'm not sure if any rules or laws have been changed since 2009, I don't think so.
There was a recent class action settlement against eBay which I accidentally was a part of. I received a check for $1.63. $1.63!! You Ticketmaster users only got $1.50. Eat my dust!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
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.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
$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.
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.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
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.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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 because this interferes with "legitimate car dealers" -- meaning those who've paid for the legislation to stop you.
When I buy an airplane ticket -- I often check the prices of some online "clearinghouses" for a better price -- why does TicketMaster raise prices, but Travelocity lowers them? They are both instances of a unique event and an empty seat that means a loss if it isn't filled. But with Airlines, the "scalper" is selling off otherwise unused seats, and,... well, in the case of a scalper, they are trying to profit while not being a mega-billion dollar company like TicketMaster.
Crooks hate competition.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
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.
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
I just got a check in the mail for one penny for an ebay motors class action settlement. Printing and mailing the check probably cost a dollar. Reminds me of the time my school sent me a bill (in the mail) for $19 cents.