Junk Fee Prevention Act

[Quintillus]

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/arts/concert-ticket-fees-biden.html

President Biden on Wednesday called for limits to be placed on the fees that can be charged for tickets to live entertainment, eight days after an unusually bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which lawmakers assailed Ticketmaster and raised concerns about the broader ticketing industry.

The president promoted his proposal at a meeting of his competition council, urging Congress to pass what the White House called a “junk fee prevention act” that would crack down on four types of excessive fees, including online ticket fees for concerts and sporting events.

...

Mr. Biden’s request for action on ticket fees came in conjunction with similar demands that Congress work to ban fees charged by airlines for family members to sit with young children; exorbitant early termination fees for TV, phone and internet service; and surprise resort and destination fees. Mr. Biden also announced that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had proposed a rule that would slash excessive credit card late fees.

Thoughts? I was chuffed to see someone might do something about this. I always get annoyed when I go to buy tickets to something online and get to the last step and get slapped with unexpected fees. Sometimes it's a couple dollars, sometimes it's 20% or more of the ticket price. It's never disclosed up front.

Surprisingly even the much-loathed Ticketmaster said it would support this act, which would require "all-in pricing", as in you see the full cost up front and the fees aren't hidden until the end. Combined with the bipartisan dislike for existing Ticketmaster practices, I'm cautiously optimistic this might actually happen.

Would anyone else be more willing to go to concerts and buy movie tickets online if they didn't have that uncertainty around what the fees would be at the end? Are posters from outside of the U.S. surprised all-in pricing isn't already a thing here, or wishing there was a similar proposal in their country?

 

[stinkubus]

Anything would be great. I usually go to one NFL game per year and Ticketmaster added over $200 to the cost this time.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I've never booked tickets to anything online. The few times I went to get tickets to a performance, I went to "The Bay Ticket Wicket" (a physical place at the old Bay store when it was downtown here), told them the performance I wanted a ticket for, they showed me a map of the auditorium so I could choose where I wanted to sit (of the unsold seats), I picked one, bought the ticket, and that was it. Or I went to the venue itself and bought my ticket right there. That's how I bought tickets for Shakespeare plays, concerts, or the musicals I wanted to see that I wasn't working on myself. Movie tickets were bought at the theatre.

The only extra fees involved were GST and some small bit of gouging - amounted to a couple of dollars.

 

[Quintillus]

$200 fees for an NFL game? How many people were going? Or was this like the Super Bowl with really good seating? That sounds pretty outrageous!

I have definitely been known to go to the ticket office to avoid paying online fees. Especially if it's walkable. But if I'm going to an event while traveling, for example, if isn't always feasible.

What is GST?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yippee kai yea for Taylor Swift and her Swiftees!

 

[stinkubus]

Most definitely not the Super Bowl. The NFL has facilitated ticket scalping for years now; Ticketmaster currently runs the website. Those surcharges were spread across three seats to a regular season game. The tickets were almost $400 a piece on their own, about $1400 total once I paid the juice.

The seats were VERY good, FWIW.

 

[amadeus]

Surprisingly even the much-loathed Ticketmaster said it would support this act

cui prodest and so on.

I'm generally pro-free markets but there is a problem when the price system is distorted on the consumer end with byzantine fee structures rather than up-front and honest pricing. Imagine if they took down all the prices on the McDonald's menu, we would think that's insanity; yet, we tolerate it in some sectors, insurance, telecommunications, medicine.

On the other hand, I'm not sure junking junk fees will reduce the amount of fees, or junk.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

so what did Ticketmaster do that was wrong other than charge whatever they wanted to?
Apparently p.o.'ed teen girls are a bigger threat to Joe Biden than the Russians...

 

[Birdjaguar]

Ticketmaster is afraid of being broken up so they want to appear to be cooperating. They will try to do an all-in price that hides the fees. What they need to do is break out the fees, show an itemized price and the bundled total al before one has made the purchase.

 

[amadeus]

about $1400 total once I paid the juice.

I think some of that money should have gone to the Goldman family.

 

[Quintillus]

Most definitely not the Super Bowl. The NFL has facilitated ticket scalping for years now; Ticketmaster currently runs the website. Those surcharges were spread across three seats to a regular season game. The tickets were almost $400 a piece on their own, about $1400 total once I paid the juice.

The seats were VERY good, FWIW.

Well at least the seats were good! But indeed, I can't imagine the cost to Ticketmaster was anywhere near $200. Yes, some of those fees are actually passed on to the facility... but I would not be happy to see a $200 fee on a $1200 purchase!

cui prodest and so on.

I'm generally pro-free markets but there is a problem when the price system is distorted on the consumer end with byzantine fee structures rather than up-front and honest pricing. Imagine if they took down all the prices on the McDonald's menu, we would think that's insanity; yet, we tolerate it in some sectors, insurance, telecommunications, medicine.

On the other hand, I'm not sure junking junk fees will reduce the amount of fees, or junk.

I'm not sure it will reduce the amount of cost, either. But knowing the price upfront would be quite nice.

At least in the U.S., I find insurance to not be too bad on the pricing front. You can go to any insurer's website and get a detailed quote in a few minutes based on the options you want. The good insurers keep the rates relatively flat year-to-year and send you a detailed itemized statement well in advance of renewal so you can change providers easily. Telecommunications, it varies, ISPs like to do those 12-month special deals but at least my phone provider is super up-front about everything.

Medicine, yes, that is a major cost opacity problem area. Trump made it so hospitals have to post their prices publicly but it's still byzantine trying to make sense of all the hospital fees versus facility fees versus provider fees and what's covered, and it's all pre-insurance rates, so a lot more work is needed there.

so what did Ticketmaster do that was wrong other than charge whatever they wanted to?
Apparently p.o.'ed teen girls are a bigger threat to Joe Biden than the Russians...

Joe Biden can walk and chew gum at the same time. The U.S. is announcing another $2.17 billion in aid to Ukraine tomorrow. But just because there is a Lend-Lease style program going on doesn't mean the administration can't improve things at home as well.

Ticketmaster hasn't broken any existing laws that I am aware of, but you don't have to break laws to be distasteful. They're basically nickel-and-diming, but with much larger sums of money.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Ticketmaster hasn't broken any existing laws that I am aware of,

Folks are looking at it as a "monopoly" and the Sherman anti Trust Act.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

What about seatgeek?
they sell tickets like ticketmaster does too

 

[Bamspeedy]

Don't need to control 100% of the market to be considered a monopoly.

Ticketmaster controls 70% of ticketing and live events, 80% of live concerts.

 

[stinkubus]

OMFG the people who take everything literally are the worst. In brief: cartels are usually just as bad as monopolies because their collective behavior can be expected to produce similar or identical results. Both cartels and literal monopolies can increase profits by selling at higher prices to smaller pools of consumers.

Firms that have market power (the ability to unilaterally effect market prices) are always bad for consumers. Any industry that has steep economies of scale will eventually end up with firms that have market power.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

Don't need to control 100% of the market to be considered a monopoly.

Ticketmaster controls 70% of ticketing and live events, 80% of live concerts.

Didn't know that but I'm not a big venue buff. [crowds are eh.]
So what's your idea of an adequate market share?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Didn't know that but I'm not a big venue buff. [crowds are eh.]
So what's your idea of an adequate market share?

I'm not one to go to big venues either, just researching this stuff on google.

Don't know ideal market share, perhaps maybe less than 50%? If vast majority of customers are happy with a service it's not really an issue. Problem is when there is a good percentage of customers are not happy and there isnt much of a choice to go elsewhere.

$200 fee for $1200 tickets got off pretty light going by 'fee is % of ticket price'. Average is 30%, but sometimes has been 82% of ticket price.

And ticketmaster claims the venue sets the fees, while the venue says they have nothing to do with the fees.....someone is lying.

Ticketmaster fees draw Klobuchar’s attention in Senate hearing

Senators on Tuesday took aim at Ticketmaster’s fees, which average around 30 percent of each ticket’s price, questioning why they are so high and who sets them. “With Ticketmaster’s mar…

thehill.com

 

[Gori the Grey]

I never don't see the title as Junk Free Prevention act. As though there were junk-free zones, and somebody passed a law to prohibit them.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Most "fees" that are on top of prices are just price increases under a new name: baggage fee, change fees, cleaning fees, resort fees, fuel fees, mgmt fees, administrative fees, handling fees, processing fees, etc. Very few if any go to pay for a specific fixed cost that is outside of the price.