You've yet to mention who you're wanting to see. Perhaps that would change the entire argument.
What difference does that make? A show is a show. But as if it'll make any different in the agruement, it's City and Colour, which sold out last year, I believe.
Please excuse my ignorance. Is this one band called City And Colour or two bands, one band being City and the other Colour? If one band, I'll pretty much stay on the sidelines of this since I know not a thing about them. If it's two, I don't know a thing about City but definitely count me in your corner for Colour, whom I'd
love to see. Somehow, I suspect my luck will fail again and it's just one band called City And Colour.
Sarcasm, dawg. Of course it's not pertinent. Other venues would still charge service charges, so that wouldn't be an option either.
They're a part of concerts and ticket buying these days, and that's just how it is. Right or wrong, they aren't going away any time soon.
This arguement is slightly flawed only for the fact that not all entities charge (or gauge) to the same degrees.
It's the same old story, those who have developed a strong business prescence will max out their costs as far as they can take them regardless of how it affects the consumer. The exception being that they will back down a bit only once their own bottom line is hit. Obviously, not a lot of that happening now in the DC area with a lot of government jobs still holding out.
I've also noticed that the biggest bitchers of those who bitch about the fees are often those who seem to have more money than the rest. To them, it's nothing to throw an extra $20 or so at something while everyone else tries to save face and quietly backs off and out of more and more shows. Again, those who have, will often gladly buy those tickets that the others decide they must forfeit because it's just not in their tighter and tighter budgets. The merchants don't care, nor do they necessarily know, who is actually buying all those tickets, as a ticket sale is a ticket sale regardless of who it was sold to. Bottom line: Nothing will change this until bigger numbers choose not to buy via big fees agencies.
For what it's worth, I don't put much stake in whether the total cost is shown up front or at the end only because, once the transaction is complete, it will still cost me exactly the same. I already know what a scam some of these agencies are running so if I must have a ticket and need to use their service, I expect to get screwed in the process. Shame is, I now see less and less shows because of them and many of these shows were not shows that have sold out... so everyone lost out on a piece of the action.