The Great British Booking Fee Rip Off.

As someone who attended his fist gig at the age of 13 (The Alarm at Leeds University in 1983 – ticket price £3.50), I have witnessed first hand over the last ten years the scam that is the ticket booking fee.

As anyone who buys tickets online will be able to testify, the hidden charges and extra charges that are appended on to your total during the transaction can leave a very bitter taste.

In 1999, I bought three tickets for the Leeds leg of the Carling Festival, at the time the tickets cost something like £125.00 with a £5.00 booking fee on each ticket as well as the postage costs.

The tickets were purchased over the telephone, and I distinctly remember the thud as my jaw hit the floor when I was informed of the £5.00 booking fee charge on each ticket.

I wrote an email to The Mean Fiddler who promote the Festival and expressed my feelings in no un-certain terms that the fee was nothing but a rip off and a way to extort extra money from punters.

Mean Fiddler responded to the email using a lot of words, but not offering any real justification for the charge.

We always buy our tickets for the Leeds festival online now via See Tickets and the booking fee is just something you tolerate paying.

But let’s do the maths on the weekend tickets.

If they sell 60,000 weekend tickets (this allows you to camp and attend all three days of the festival, I have attended every Leeds Festival so far) and there is £5.00 extra on the face value of the ticket, this equates to -

5 x 60,000 = 300,000.

So the £5.00 booking fee generates an extra £300,000 in revenue for what exactly?

There is also a tidy profit to be had on the overcharged postage costs of sending out the precious tickets you have just ordered.

I don’t believe for a second it costs anyone £5.00 to send three bits of paper via recorded delivery to a UK address, yet this is the type of charge you will regularly see.

Posted below is the screen grab of the purchase we made a few weeks ago for three tickets to see the Ting Tings at the new Leeds Academy.

The face value of the tickets was £15.00 each.

3 x 15 = 45.

Now we did some checking and spoke to Crash Records in Leeds, as well as running the transaction through various ticket websites and this was the cheapest we could find online.

You will note there has still been an extra £7.89 in fees added (including the postage, which I have no problem paying for, but what is the rest of it for?).

Here is a screenshot of the same transaction via See Tickets -

This includes a £2.00 booking fee on each ticket AND a transaction fee of £4.80.

Giving a total cost of £55.80.

I could not find any mention of delivery charges, but I think there may be one as well.

Next up, we have Ticketmaster, who didn’t have the gig at the Leeds Academy, but did have the Manchester Apollo gig listed.

Straight away on the face value of the ticket there is a £1.50 difference, with this gig costing £16.50.

Next up is a service charge of £3.75 PER TICKET.

Then three delivery options, all costing £3.00 a time, including Box Office Collection and PRINTING YOUR OWN TICKETS!

Yes, that’s £3.00 to go and pick up your own tickets, OR £3.00 TO PRINT YOUR OWN TICKETS!

Giving a grand total for three tickets of £63.75.

So what’s the point of all this, well the point is is I don’t mind paying for something at all, but you just can’t help but get the feeling that every time you make a purchase like this you’re getting done, plain and simple!

One last question to ponder about the Great British Booking Fee Rip Off is this -

If the gig gets cancelled, why do ticket agencies never refund the booking fee?