You know what frosts my flakes?
Convenience fees. Specifically, convenience fees for buying tickets online.
Who exactly is experiencing the convenience here? Because, from where I’m sitting, it sure isn’t me.
Let’s review what happens. I go online, find the event, create an account, make up another password I’ll forget in ten minutes.
I enter my name, address, phone number, email address and, probably, the name of my first pet, for security of course.
Then I select my seats, enter my credit card number, process the transaction and print the tickets myself or save them to my phone.
In other words, I do all the work.
Meanwhile, the ticket company doesn’t have to pay an employee to answer the phone, stand at a ticket window, print a paper ticket, handle cash or mail anything.
Yet, somehow, after I perform all the labor, they charge me a convenience fee.
Shouldn’t I be getting a three-dollar discount?
The best part is when they stack fees on top of fees.
You buy a $25 ticket and then there’s a service fee and a processing fee for using a credit card because you can’t pay cash online.
Then you pay a facility fee, a delivery fee to get a ticket delivered electronically and, finally, a convenience fee.
By the time you’re done, your $25 ticket costs $42.
At this point, I’m waiting for a breathing fee. “Thank you for attending tonight’s event. A $1.50 oxygen surcharge has been added to your account.”
The truth is these aren’t convenience fees. They’re “because we can” fees. And companies keep charging them because we keep paying them.
Here’s Grandpa Grumpy’s solution. Before you click Buy, check whether the venue has a box office. Sometimes you can avoid all those fees by buying directly. Imagine that. A discount for doing business with actual human beings.
If I’m doing all the work, don’t charge me extra. Hand me a discount and a punch card.