have a friend who calls Ticketmaster, ‘Ticketbastard’, and there are a lot of chances you agree with him: they have outrageous processing fees that make you pay a regular ticket $10-15 more than the announced price! They sometimes add up to 40 percent to the cost of a ticket, and I have never understood how they could justify all these fees! There are the service charge fees, the building facility fees, the processing fees, the shipping/delivery fees, and the irony is that these latter ones still exist when you print your ticket yourself at home!
And there is no way to escape Ticketmaster, they have monopolized the sales of the events. But, in these times of revolt, there is a change, minor, but still a change: Ticketmaster has been forced to refund all its handling fees. This is what the Huffington Post wrote:
‘As the result of a class-action lawsuit, the ticket-pushing behemoth is going to be handing out $1.50 per ticket (up to 17) to everyone who used the site between October 21, 1999 and October 19, 2011. Those who chose the UPS shipping option will be getting a little bit more back: an additional $5.00 credit per order.’
The fees were said to be ‘deceptive because they did not clearly state that Ticketmaster was profiting from them.’ That’s why the fees will continue to be added to you bill, but Ticketmaster will clearly label them as profit now!!
Actually, Ticketmaster will give money back for a maximum of 17 transactions. I have no idea why only 17, in 12 years I must have been bought many more than 17 tickets! But nothing will happen before April 15th 2012 and payments won't be issued until 30 days of the settlement's final approval, which is now scheduled for May 29th 2012.
The case began in 2003, when two guys filed a joint lawsuit arguing that Ticketmaster fees were excessive, and now the giant ticket seller faces a minimum payment of $11.25 million per year over the four-year life of the settlement. It is a small victory but still a sort of David and Goliath story.