PreferredSeat.com Blog

Ticket service charges are nothing new for concert fans who have had to deal with Ticketmaster’s service charges and the service charges added to tickets that are resold by ticket brokers and fans alike.  And there’s no escaping it unless you are a season ticket holder or have access to the venue box office.

But you can save money by avoiding ticket sites that hide their service fees, because as you can imagine they do it for a reason.

Sports fans and theater goers have the same problem with ticket fees adding up to 25% or the ticket price from primary sellers like Ticketmaster. And the fees ticket brokers add can increase the price of a ticket by several hundred percent, or in some cases ticket brokers sell tickets without a service fee and even below face value if the market demands it.

Ticketmaster has started showing the total ticket price up front for many but not all events they sell tickets for, and they show how the service fees add to the price of the ticket. And that is a good start, but the biggest complaint from fans is the excessive price they charge for the service they provide, and Ticketmaster chooses to ignore this fact.

A majority of the tickets sold online have hidden fees and most of them use the same method to hide them. Stubhub resells ticket broker tickets for the most part and adds an additional 10% to the cost of the tickets only after you enter your personal information. In additon the tickets may already be marked up by 15% or more.

Most ticket brokers online use one of several checkout systems that add a hefty service charge only after you choose the shipping method. It makes it hard for consumers to determine the best price even when most of the tickets sites have the very same tickets.

There are a few ticket brokers that do not have any hidden fees or service charges. The price of the ticket may very well be above the face value as determined by the market, just as anything else you buy. But you can find tickets online without any hidden fees.

PreferredSeat.com is one of those ticket brokers that believes that by providing the total cost of each ticket up front consumers can make a better choice without having to spend 5 minutes on each site trying to figure out just how much that ticket really will cost in the end.  When you have the cheapest ticket prices as PreferredSeat.com has, you don’t have to hide anything.

Ticket prices for general admission seating for concerts can very greatly from each ticket site on the web. Even on the same website you can find dozens of listings for the same general admission tickets with descriptions such as Ga, GA1, Ga-7, etc, and the price of each of these tickets can very by as much as $10 – $50 or more.

The thing that consumers need to understand is that these tickets are all the same general admission tickets, and the only difference is the price the individual ticket broker is asking for his ticket. So the point is… Buy the Cheapest One!

And if you’re not sure if there is more than one general admission area, one close to the stage and one in the rear, and this happens once in a while, then call up the ticket broker and ask! Good luck with that one though since most of the large brokerages such as Stubhub and Ticketsnow employ so many people, after waiting on hold for 15 minutes, you find they don’t know a thing about the band or the venue seating!

Find a reputable ticket broker who is not so big they cannot answer their phone in a timely manner, on their dime, and answer any questions you may have about the seating and cost of the tickets. And while you’re at it, check to see if they belong to the Better Business Bureau. And they display the link on their site that takes you to their BBB rating so you can verify the integrity of the business.

If you have any questions about seating for any concert, theatre, or sporting event, don’t hesitate to give PreferredSeat.com a call at 800 427-3914, and they’ll show you why they’ve been the best choice for tickets of any kind since 1987.

Aerosmith has canceled the remainder of their summer tour as the band’s publicist, MSO, announced yesterday, and it’s once again time for Aerosmith fan’s to return their tickets. You may recall that we made the call in an earlier Aerosmith post, that the band would be canceling the remainder of the tour after Steven Tyler fell from the stage while dancing and broke his shoulder.

Steven's Still Smiling

I’m sure they made a few extra bucks holding on to their fans money for an extra week, but that’s what the business has come down to, especially with Aerosmith this is all too familiar.

So, once again Aerosmith fans must follow that all too familiar phrase and “return your Aerosmith Tickets to the place of purchase”.

And hopefully you bought your tickets from a reputable source, such as PreferredSeat.com, where they issue a full refund for canceled events. Try getting that from Craigslist or Ebay!