Elbow. Avalon. $20 tickets. Sweet.
This was how I felt, until the “TicketMaster” experience.
Let’s look over the final bill..
* Yeah, $20 each for the tickets. Nice.
* $6.50 “Convenience Charge”…TIMES FUCKING TWO! Who the fuck came up with that shit? It surely doesn’t cost TicketMaster $13.00 to serve up the page that I am ordering from. If it does, wow, please let me redesign your web site. I would love to be in on some of that dirty corporate money!
* Delivery. Here’s a mindfuck. To print out the tickets (using MY own printer, ink, and paper), I would have to pay $2.50 for that honor. To have TicketMaster print out the tickets, with their own ink and paper, and have them waiting for me at the box office, is FREE!?! Isn’t that a bit backwards?
* Order processing. Another fucking $5.15. Where does that price come from, exactly? That “.15″ shows there is some sort of method to the absolute corporate madness. Please explain it to me. You can use big words. I is smartz.
Now, the real head spinner. After getting hammered $18.15 (keeping in mind that I bought two tickets, at $20 each - that’s almost another fucking ticket!), I get an email telling me that because of my purchase, I am entitled to two free music downloads at iTunes. Without ranting on how iTunes AAC files are absolute shit compared to a proper CD copy of a song (if you even dare to battle me on that, I will smack you so hard that - hopefully for you - your hearing might actually return, since you obviously have the hearing range of Pete Townsend), let’s reflect on my two free songs. How should we label this…
* Two cubes of ice after giving me a hard kick to the scrotum?
* Two cotton balls after punching me in the nose?
* Two dabs of vaseline *after* fucking me in the ass?
* Two licks off of your ice cream cone after you dropped it in doggy doo?
* Two votes for McCain after I voted for Obama?
I could go on, but I need to prepare my dinner. Two helpings of “you can’t do shit”, on a new shiny plate of “deal with it”.
Fuck TicketMaster.
I’m so with you. Just bought 3 tickets for the Cure. $49.50 per ticket. Plus $30 in fees. What a racket. I really hope the Nine Inch Nails tour works well as they sell the tickets themselves. I hope they make billions and billions of dollars so everyone else will follow their lead. I want the money to go to the artists.
Comment by Laura — May 9, 2008 @ 4:57 am
Well, at least two lousy songs for free. Many people love things for free, even if it’s crap. It’s *our fault* to be picky, see? =P
They don’t give anything for free here! Convenience theft, (I mean, charge), yes. For using my paper & ink, also a charge. Um, cheaper than having tickets printed by them, yes. It’s never free.
Also, I hate the fact that there’s always a presale only for those who have some specific credit card. People who do not have those credit cards are pretty much screwed up. I fell for it and got one last month.
Debt! Yay! =/
(expletive)’em! =P —> Not sure if the censorship button works on comments too =)
Comment by Pelicanito — May 9, 2008 @ 5:56 am
Speaking of sound quality; I don’t mean to deviate from the topic but I have been wondering about something for a long time now. I’m in my fifties, I don’t own an mp3 player and wouldn’t have time to use one even if I did. I see many people on the streets using them though. I kind of feel like a time traveler from a bygone era. As a time traveler I have been wondering about two things. First: How good are these little “ear buds” or “in-ear phones”? We had this technology forty years ago but nobody would use them because it was said that the sound quality was bad compared to those big over the ear phones. Has technology for this type of ear device improved since then? Second: Nobody in my time would even think of inserting one of these things in his ear if it had already been used by someone else. Now I see people sharing these things with each other without hesitation. What has changed?
Comment by Coadunate — May 10, 2008 @ 10:38 am