Are Ticket Offices Arbitrary Rules Turing Away Sales?

By: Jessica Teaford

http://www.cambridgeday.com/2010/01/15/oberon-keeps-box-office-service-low-online-service-fees-high/

After working in a Box Office for the past two year I cannot tell you how many times I have had patrons question our rules and policies about the way we sell tickets.  And all I can say to them is that I understand their concerns but it is our policy and I am only a ticket seller and these decisions are above my pay grade.  But I do wonder how many sales we lose because we cannot (with our contract with Tickets.com) sell single tickets over the phone.  If a patron calls our office we redirect them to Tickets.com, either their call center or website, to purchase tickets and they are then charged a service fee.  This angers a lot of patrons because to them it doesn’t make sense why they can’t just buy them from me over the phone to avoid the service fees with our ticketing system.

In this article people getting upset because their only option to get tickets for an advance performance is to go online and pay service fees for the tickets.  There are many ticketing systems that venues can choose from but most all of them do charge some sort of service fee because it is the way that the ticketing system makes their money.  I think people are forgetting thought that those fees are not just service fees but convenience fees.  They are paying for the convenience of going online or calling in to purchase tickets instead of having to getting into their cars and driving to the venue.  Or in the case of this article the venue is allowing them to purchase tickets in advance instead of taking a chance of them selling out at the door.  As a poor college student I don’t like to pay services fees either but I always try to look at what the fees I am paying are saving from having to do.