You get all excited to see a show, and see it's $50 and decide, screw it, I like this band, I'm going to do it. You begin the check out process and right before you hit pay, you suddenly notice an additional $13 in service fees. Bullshit. Service fees can add up to about 40% the price of the ticket.
Former Most Precious Blood and Indecision guitarist turned Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan is looking to prevent ticketing companies from trying to fool customers like this in the future with a new bill he's introducing this week. The bill would require ticket services to list all service fees anywhere they display the price of the ticket.
Brannan explained his motivation to the NY Daily News:
"When I was a touring musician, live shows were about having fun and building a sense of community — not nickel and diming kids who like music," said Brannan (D-Brooklyn), who was a guitarist in punk bands before turning to a career in politics.
"Ticket prices in our city are already through the roof. New Yorkers don't need big retailers making things worse by hiding extra fees until the very end of a sale," he said. "Nobody wants to click on a ticket that costs $50, fill in their name, address, telephone number, email, and credit card information, and then find out it actually costs $100 or more."
Brannan notes the bill would also require the service fees to be listed in any advertisement where the ticket price is advertised. While Brannan will not be putting a cap on these feels, he is hoping having to have these fees out in the open would shame some ticket vendors into charging fair prices. "Hopefully if they had to be transparent about it they'd be more fair."
Thanks, Justin. We hope this gets through.
