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Mandatory Booking Fees: The ASA Responds
- Thread starter Husty
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #3
On my phone but having checked the .pdf here: http://www.seagulls.co.uk/documents/matchday-ticket-prices-2013-14-final-3229-894901.pdf I don't personally feel that it is clear enough and ill be writing to them again tonight.
amexee
New member
How very kind of you.
Bold Seagull
strong and stable with me, or...
The fact that someone* booking a home match ticket cannot purchase one at the advertised price. The booking fee's of £1 and £1.50 mean at the very least, you have to add £1 to the price, and this isn't clearly disclosed on the BHA advertisements.
*In the event of a home cup game, a platinum member will automatically be credited a ticket without booking fee, but this is the only exception.
Gazwag
5 millionth post poster
It says additional booking fees apply and you then go to another place of the ticket site to see what they are 
Clearly some people have never purchased tickets for an event before, I purchased 4 tickets for the theatre royal in Brighton this week and was charged £14.55 for the priviledge, this is the con people should be targetting.
Clearly some people have never purchased tickets for an event before, I purchased 4 tickets for the theatre royal in Brighton this week and was charged £14.55 for the priviledge, this is the con people should be targetting.
SurreySeagulls
Well-known member
Or when Ticketshafter charge you a convenience fee for having the cheek to print your own tickets!!!!
Diego Napier
Well-known member
- Mar 27, 2010
- 4,416
It says additional booking fees apply and you then go to another place of the ticket site to see what they are
Clearly some people have never purchased tickets for an event before, I purchased 4 tickets for the theatre royal in Brighton this week and was charged £14.55 for the priviledge, this is the con people should be targetting.
Good point. By now, unless you've been on Mars, you'd know there's an "admin. fee". It's the principle of being allowed to charge extra that needs to be addressed.
Booking fees are a total joke. So what if a vendor uses a third party supplier. I'm sure third party suppliers are used in many other areas of the Albion's business but we don't get their costs split out from the main price. Why just tickets?
Next time my ticket screws up I might bill the Albion for my admin. Or ask for a refund on the booking fee.
Bold Seagull
strong and stable with me, or...
I sort of understand it for theatre venues. They have different acts or events week to week with difference promotors / producers etc. that set their own actual ticket prices, especially for touring events. Therefore when the venue sells tickets, it's profit is often in the fee. It's got out of control, but I understand why it's there.
For a football club though, that is the venue, promoter and act, it must know all it's costs and overheads, and therefore the ticket price should be the ticket price. You can of course have a fee for a type of booking, but there has to be one way in which you can purchase the ticket at it's face value. For turning up at the stadium, going into the mega-store (surely you want to attract people to do this?), and buying tickets from someone who'd be manning the phones anyway, then paying £1.50 to buy your ticket is just totally ridiculous in my opinion.
For a football club though, that is the venue, promoter and act, it must know all it's costs and overheads, and therefore the ticket price should be the ticket price. You can of course have a fee for a type of booking, but there has to be one way in which you can purchase the ticket at it's face value. For turning up at the stadium, going into the mega-store (surely you want to attract people to do this?), and buying tickets from someone who'd be manning the phones anyway, then paying £1.50 to buy your ticket is just totally ridiculous in my opinion.
While that makes sense, as it brings people into the store and might lead to an increase in impulse buying of merchandise, the club have previously made efforts to actually draw people to use the online ticketing system rather than in person.
I agree. It's not so much the charging of booking fees that irritates me as the docile manner in which the gutless, supine British just accept it, and even defend it! I've lost count the number of times I've read on here that 'everybody does it' or "they've got to pay for the costs" as if that justified it. If shops started adding a 5% shopping fee to cover the cost of running the tills I bet half the mug punters on here would say "ok, sounds fair, someone's got to pay for it". With attitudes like that theatres, booking organisations and football clubs know they can add whatever charges they like - and so they do.
The London Palladium are exempt from this rant as they didn't charge me a booking fee for buying in person. Nor did they charge me extra for using a credit card. If they can do it why can't everyone else?
Totally agree it's a disgrace. However, I'm sure there must be some tax reason as to why it is charged seperately and if it is outlawed then I'm sure they'll just roll the fee into the purchase price and probably round it up to the nearest pound for the convenience!
No there isn't. The booking fee is still revenue and the cost of the tickets is still part of the Cost of Sales. This season they won't show the travel voucher cost separately and that's actually charged at different VAT rate to the actual match ticket.
- Thread starter
- #16
That means sweet FA though when the club are breaking the law by not being upfront about the mandatory booking fees.
Hotchilidog
Well-known member
- Jan 24, 2009
- 8,692
Funnily enough The Royal Opera House does not charge a booking fee.
Superphil
Dismember
Nor do Southern Rail. But most football clubs do, if you check Leeds, you'll see they use the exact same online systemas us, and their booking fees are the same as us, and their tickets are more expensive than ours.
smiler
Active member
It says additional booking fees apply and you then go to another place of the ticket site to see what they are
Clearly some people have never purchased tickets for an event before, I purchased 4 tickets for the theatre royal in Brighton this week and was charged £14.55 for the priviledge, this is the con people should be targetting.
If you buy tickets at the theatre there is no booking fee
If you go to the Amex they charge £1.50
amexee
New member
What gets my goat with transaction charges is when you are tied into a contract and the other party produces some small print that lets them up their fees. In particular my rant is aimed at Elavon who without any warning have stuck a new charge onto every single transaction that goes through my credit card terminal. And i am stuck for 3 long bloody years paying it, and can only moan loudly to every other person with a card machine for the next 3 years to gain a small amount of satisfaction everytime someone goes elsewhere. P.s got to hear about 2 weeks after signing up for 3 years, that is pee taking. Rant over