What is a "Booking Fee" for...?

moonrakerz

I used to buy my tickets for Arsenal FC direct from the club - at face value.
Now you have to go through Ticketmaster - guess what, there is now a booking fee.

It is nothing but a rip off !

chika

I don't know about sports tickets but Paul the Painter is right about theatre and music tickets.

I work in theatre and the big promotors pay us a set fee for venue hire, say £2000. Out of that we must pay all the staff, supply the paper, ticket wallets etc to print the tickets on and maintain phone lines, computers, pay electric bills - Its a massive list.

As a venue, we do not get any discount off the value of the ticket and we sell at the value that the promoter sets. To cover costs we add the booking fee. Believe it or not most venues are operating on tight budgets and struggle to break even. Some are heavily subsidised by councils. Without the booking fees most venues couldn't operate or the government would be forced to raise taxes to cover the cost of keeping venues open.

Fatso_the_wombat

So, essentially, calling it a "booking fee" is a complete misnomer, then? Fair enough, a ticket seller has to make a profit, but surely it would be better to label it more accurately? "Booking fee" implies that you are paying for a service, when in fact it's ticket seller profit...

Earlier it was suggested that if there were no booking fees a £30 + £5BF ticket would cost £35 as the ticket seller would get their money somehow. I would say that this is exactly the way to go. Then when a ticket is advertised you know exactly what the price is you will be paying.

chika

Booking fees are just that a fee for the booking. If tickets are sold by outside agencies then fair they may charge a fee, but isn't the convienience of being able to book a ticket in a shop or over the phone worth it. Imagine if a Man U fan from London had to travel to Manchester to buy a match ticket. Surely a few quid extra is cheap in comparison to the fuel & time costs that would have been incurred.

I speak only for my venue but I know its the same in many others. The booking fee covers the cost of providing staff, telephones, paper etc and everything else to make the booking.

I have people writing and calling me all the time to complain about booking fees so its a bit of a bugbear for me!

stu3105

My sis just bought 2 tickets for Billy Joel in Glasgow £65 ticket and a £5.50 booking fee.
SHAMEFUL.

skylight

I've got some tickets from Ticketmaster for War of the Worlds next weekend (lucky for me, Dad paid for the tickets!)

£37.50 each face value
£4.50 EACH service charge (not a booking fee any longer!!)
£2.75 pair to be posted. 2nd Class only in a usual envelope and 2nd class post is what, 21p???

So £11.75 extra and over the ticket price - 16% of the face value!

Is 16% appearing to be the norm then???

Fatso_the_wombat

Here's another:

What's the difference between a "service charge" and a "processing fee"?

Fatso_the_wombat

chika wrote:

Booking fees are just that a fee for the booking. If tickets are sold by outside agencies then fair they may charge a fee, but isn't the convienience of being able to book a ticket in a shop or over the phone worth it. Imagine if a Man U fan from London had to travel to Manchester to buy a match ticket. Surely a few quid extra is cheap in comparison to the fuel & time costs that would have been incurred.

I speak only for my venue but I know its the same in many others. The booking fee covers the cost of providing staff, telephones, paper etc and everything else to make the booking.

That is a somewhat different explanation to previous posters who have stated that the "booking fee" equates to "ticket seller profit".

With regard to shops; why does HMV charge a booking fee for people buying festival tickets in store? They get sent books of tickets and just sell them in their shops like any other product. They don't get in extra staff to deal with their sale. There's no extra overheads incurred at all.

Buying a general admission ticket over the counter at HMV is no different to buying a CD in my mind.

I maintain that all costs incurred in the selling of the ticket - P&P excepted - should be covered by the face value.

candyman67

I run a small coach company, and as such I often buy tickets in bulk.
I deal with various ticket agencies, and the rule of thumb seems to be that if you buy the minimum tickets needed to be a group, you don't get charged booking fees or postage. And you can often get a good deal in the process.
Bought some Blue Man Group tickets recently. Group rate started at 8 seats.
Full price would have been £40, I got them for £25 each. Posted out with no "extras". Sold 2 on Ebay for £37.50 each and am using the rest for personal.
8* £25 = £200 - £75 = £125 / 6 = £20.83

OR

6* £40 = £240 + (6* £2.75 "booking")£16.5 = £42.50 each

49% discount!

That was an example. The group rate isn't always so good, but it's still usally at least £10 off.
ALWAYS look at group rate. It might work out cheaper to buy those extra 2 tickets to bring the overall price down. You could always get rid of the tickets, bringing the price down further.

Whenever I get tickets I usually sell at full price, + reasonable postage, and the only extra is a credit card fee of 3% (because that is what I get charged) Debit cards are free.

If I can do it, it shows how much you are being ripped off!

mike_the_bike_2

The way it works for me at he NEC is I see a show that I might like to see..I see they have added a booking fee and its £7 to park and I BOYCOTT IT!...If we all voted with our feet I suspect something might happen! ... I do know that at last years International Motorcycle show numbers were down because of this very reason