The booking fee nonsense is spreading -- but why?

tommyzulu

More and more places now seem to add a 'booking fee' without a second thought when they could surely just as easily put ticket prices up is they need to charge more. It doesn't make sense. My lical theatre/cinema charges a booking fee even when you do to the box-office in person to buy a ticket. Cineworld add £0.95 to every ticket - however you chose to buy. Then they run ads saying "two tickets for a tenner" when it is actually £11.90. These are just two examples. No third parties taking a slice of their money. What a cheat. 

DullGreyGuy

tommyzulu said:

More and more places now seem to add a 'booking fee' without a second thought when they could surely just as easily put ticket prices up is they need to charge more. It doesn't make sense. My lical theatre/cinema charges a booking fee even when you do to the box-office in person to buy a ticket. Cineworld add £0.95 to every ticket - however you chose to buy. Then they run ads saying "two tickets for a tenner" when it is actually £11.90. These are just two examples. No third parties taking a slice of their money. What a cheat. 

Cineworld doesn't charge a booking fee in cinema both according to their website and from frequent visits to one of their cinemas 

In my mind it really depends what you are buying and if it's sold only via the company itself or via third parties too. If the thing is sold via multiple retailers it makes a nice change that you can see what the "true" price is any so how much someone is adding/removing. If not you've no idea if seat 32F has as good a view as 30JJ if the later is £20 more expensive but could be a better view or just a higher margin. 


To be honest I'd love for things to go the other way, some form of formal price for everything based on quality and vendors having to display it and the price they're charging. Make it much easier to workout if I am paying more for better quality or paying for a brand name... the later isn't a problem if you want that sort of thing but the openness would be refreshing. 

in_my_wellies

I recently visited wildlife centre. A walk which was of interest was just about to start and although there were spaces I was unable to buy a ticket at the desk. I had to go through the booking centre. Signal was so poor I was unable to do this so I couldn't join in the walk. So the charity lost out on two paying customers (£36ish)

However, I did notice that the booking fee was for every ticket, not one fee for the total booking, so a little more than 10% added to every ticket. Why not just add the 10% to every ticket - it wouldn't annoy people!

Eldi_Dos

£36 that's inflation, used to only be a dollar and an a half to visit a tree museum.

Curtesy of Joni Mitchell's,Big Yellow Taxi.

Ballard

I’ve come to the assumption that booking fees are added for tax reasons, or something similar. 

I have no tax knowledge but maybe this can easily be assigned to a different company who offset against expenses. Maybe it’s a different tax rate for this service. 

…or it could be simply to make the tickets look cheaper until you get to pay for them. 

sheramber

Ballard said:

I’ve come to the assumption that booking fees are added for tax reasons, or something similar. 

I have no tax knowledge but maybe this can easily be assigned to a different company who offset against expenses. Maybe it’s a different tax rate for this service. 

…or it could be simply to make the tickets look cheaper until you get to pay for them. 

The booking fee will go to the booking service to cover their admin in processing the tickets.

The ticket fee will go to whoever is supplying the  event.