RedBull Air Race - Help on Ticket Charges

21stars

Hi All

This is my first post, but I could really do with some help from any money savers out there!
I thought that going to the RedBull Air Race in London this August would be a really great day out, and I've got six friends coming. So I went online to book the tickets, which at £45.00 a pop are expensive but we don't have any birthday's or big events in August so we all knew we could budget for it ok....But when I went to buy there were all these additional charges. 80p per ticket - if you print it out at home but a lot more if you have the ticket sent to your home adress; £3.20 - or £3.50 I forget - for a ticket handling/booking fee; then 3.50% charge for using a credit card, although this was calculated wrongly as 3.50% on the total including charges would be £9.54 but it was on the final screen as £10.01! Also there wasn't an option to use a debit card, which I know debit cards aren't advisable online but if they're going to charge £10.01 then I'd like to take the risk!
My central issues are really
a)they were calculating the credit charge fee wrongly
b) why can they charge a booking and ticket fee?
c) shouldn't they give you the option of paying by other methods than credit cards
d) they are the only retailers for these tickets, I can't find them anywhere else!

So has anyone any advice? I've emailed RedBull ticketing to see what they're going to do about the fact they're site can't calculate credit card charges properly. I haven't gone through with the transaction, but my friends would be disappointed if I didn't book and some of them have already paid me for the face value of their tickets, so I really want to get the tickets for us, we're all looking forward to the day out.

Does anyone think that the OFT would be interested? Or a local consumer group? And would it make any difference? It's one of those typical monopolistic stories where you want the good but the supplier has set their conditions and you have to follow them or you won't get the good. I wish there was another retailer, perhaps RedBull would have to rethink their charges!

HELP

photome

21stars wrote: »

Hi All

This is my first post, but I could really do with some help from any money savers out there!
I thought that going to the RedBull Air Race in London this August would be a really great day out, and I've got six friends coming. So I went online to book the tickets, which at £45.00 a pop are expensive but we don't have any birthday's or big events in August so we all knew we could budget for it ok....But when I went to buy there were all these additional charges. 80p per ticket - if you print it out at home but a lot more if you have the ticket sent to your home adress; £3.20 - or £3.50 I forget - for a ticket handling/booking fee; then 3.50% charge for using a credit card, although this was calculated wrongly as 3.50% on the total including charges would be £9.54 but it was on the final screen as £10.01! Also there wasn't an option to use a debit card, which I know debit cards aren't advisable online but if they're going to charge £10.01 then I'd like to take the risk!
My central issues are really
a)they were calculating the credit charge fee wrongly
b) why can they charge a booking and ticket fee?
c) shouldn't they give you the option of paying by other methods than credit cards
d) they are the only retailers for these tickets, I can't find them anywhere else!

So has anyone any advice? I've emailed RedBull ticketing to see what they're going to do about the fact they're site can't calculate credit card charges properly. I haven't gone through with the transaction, but my friends would be disappointed if I didn't book and some of them have already paid me for the face value of their tickets, so I really want to get the tickets for us, we're all looking forward to the day out.

Does anyone think that the OFT would be interested? Or a local consumer group? And would it make any difference? It's one of those typical monopolistic stories where you want the good but the supplier has set their conditions and you have to follow them or you won't get the good. I wish there was another retailer, perhaps RedBull would have to rethink their charges!

HELP

Arent those tickets being handled by ticketmaster? I agree that the charges are a lot but they do have to make money.

Edit I have just checked the ticketmaster site and they are charging £4.50 service per ticket, £2 to post and no card charges.

RoyalBlue_2

It really is time that the authorities cracked down on this con trick of adding numerous and significant charges to the advertised face value of tickets.

I have just bought two tickets (face value £15 each) to the Red Bull Air Race and have been charged a total of £35.54! This, direct from the Red Bull Air Race website.

First there was an admin fee of £3.50 - that's like Tesco charging me a fee to run my groceries through the till! If you are selling something you have to do a bit of 'admin' and that should be included in the price.

Then a credit card charge of £1.24 - they don't offer the option to pay by debit card so no way of avoiding that!

Finally, and really adding insult to injury, they charged me 40p a ticket for using my own time, printer, paper and ink to print off the tickets!! Quite scandalous.

Could someone please tell me a way that anyone can actually buy these tickets at their face value? I thought not!

This 'scam' is no better than the Ryanair type headline ticket prices (with plenty of 'hidden' extras) that the authorities have finally clamped down on.

Perhaps another battle for Mr Lewis to spearhead?

Jamp

To anyone who's been before: do you really need tickets? You must be able to see the race from some public place where tickets aren't required, or have they got all the spots with a good view closed off? I'm thinking of going to the Rotterdam one tomorrow but presume it's a pretty similar setup. I see that in Budapest it's free to spectate, presumably as they had no way of ticketing for the whole bank of the Danube!

Stompa

Jamp wrote: »

To anyone who's been before: do you really need tickets? You must be able to see the race from some public place where tickets aren't required, or have they got all the spots with a good view closed off?

I went down to the practice day last year and it seemed to me that they'd done a pretty good job of closing all the good spots off. Mind you, perhaps those with some local knowledge may know of places.

21stars

Hi all

Ok, so I gave in and paid the extortionate charges, my friends split the extra costs with me. Which I was a bit embarrassed to ask for, but they've been lovely about it. So we've now spent £47.65 per ticket (incuding those additional costs), so fingers crossed it will be a fantastic day!

21stars

...I went on the website to check the ticket terms and conditions...unfortunately you can't take your own drinks...but whilst I was there, the magazine which will apparantly retail for £3.00 was on there to download in .pdf format! You could consider that a way of recouping the extra ticket charges - if you want. Here's the link:
http://www.redbullairrace.com/races.php?id=6&subpage=6&cms=67&lang=en

For those that of you that are going, I hope you enjoy the day!

photome

21stars wrote: »

Hi all

Ok, so I gave in and paid the extortionate charges, my friends split the extra costs with me. Which I was a bit embarrassed to ask for, but they've been lovely about it. So we've now spent £47.65 per ticket (incuding those additional costs), so fingers crossed it will be a fantastic day!

Why didnt you do as i suggested in my reply and buy from ticketmaster for less?

[Deleted User]

I'm going to the O2 arena on the same day.. taking my telephoto lens on my camera and hoping to see a few planes at a distance..

It's a shame I don't work for a big city bank - they'd all have a great view from their offices in canary warf

21stars

photome wrote: »

Why didnt you do as i suggested in my reply and buy from ticketmaster for less?

When I compared card charges, posting and handling fees, and ticket fees buying from Red Bull actually ended up cheaper! But thanks for the heads up because I did go straight to ticketmaster and check it out!