A week ago I went to the NIN/JA tour, a farewell tour for Nine Inch Nails and a reunion tour for Jane’s Addiction. As I sit and reflect on just how good the show was, and it was great, I am still, a week later, having to lean to one side due to the enormous chunk of my ass that is missing from the ticket price. I loved this show but I paid far more than I should have and it still stings. I have been sitting on this article for awhile, partially to try to give myself extra cushion, but partially to see if my anger for the vicious fucking by ticket that my anus was treated to would subside or die down into that dull roar that is essentially the soundtrack/background noise to my life but it has not.

Now I know with that kind of set up you are probably left with a stomach twisted in knots to hear just how much Livenation, the ticket vendor,  stole from me like a mugger in a back alley. I feel like Bruce Wayne after seeing his parents gunned down for his mom’s pearls. I want revenge. Of course rather than dress in tights and fight crime I am just going to go ahead and bitch online. I don’t need to add broken bones to the shattered remains of my spirit and naive belief that a company might not try to gouge honest Americans of their hard earned dollars in the midst of such challenging economic times.

So here it is. I paid $20 a ticket. Well technically 19.91 but close enough. Now sure, you are probably going ‘Alright asshole, what is the deal? 20 bones for two alternative legends is a great price and you should be happy they let you in the door!’ I get that. I think $20 is a great price for this show. It was incredible. It was probably NIN’s best set I’ve seen and I’ve seen them five times. So why am I complaining? $19.91 is what I paid. The actual ticket price was-wait for it-$7.66

I am going to give that its own sentence.

I paid $20 for a $7.66 ticket.

So for those of you playing along and home, that means that I paid just under twice the actual ticket price in service fees. That is fucking criminal. Now again, if the ticket price was $20 full stop, I would have no problem paying that for this show. I would have paid a lot more. But I feel like I have really been had here. I have never felt so fleeced in all my life for $20 and I bought Brokeback Mountain without seeing it first (it isn’t because they are gay, it is because the movie showed things that should have been in a montage and skipped over parts that would have actually been interesting). A friend of mine was a bit slower with the ticket purchase and she had a $2o face price. She paid $34.

Let’s break it down here and see what sorts of fees we are dealing with. I mean, I want to be fair and you might be thinking that the fees were justified, that maybe everyone needs to be tightening their belts and jacking up the prices to continue to bring us entertainment in a time of severe ecconomic recession. Okay, fair enough, here it is: Ticket Fee-$6.25, Parking Fee-$6. Now, taken seperately, these don’t sound that bad or unreasonable. Sure they are roughly a dollar and some change less than the actual ticket price but whatever. Bullshit.

First and foremost, what the fuck is a ticket fee? I assume it is a processing fee or service charge but anyway you slice it that is a ‘extra shit tacked on so we can make some money.’ Now sure, the ticket service should get theirs for the show and their cut probably isn’t all that much off of the overall ticket sales. But you know, and maybe I am getting into semantics here, but don’t call it a ticket fee. The ticket fee should be the price of the ticket.  In fact, this should just be incorporated into the ticket price if you want to charge me a ticket fee. Don’t bait and switch me with an extra $6 after I have already agreed to get everyone tickets.

Sure, sure, if they did that less people may go but for a big marquee show like this, you could charge $75 and people would pay. Hell Coldplay charges $120 for shitty seats and people show up to the arena. You are going to get paid if you have a big act coming, you don’t have to be all deceitful and like the Federal Government. So don’t hand me a ticket fee after you’ve suckered me in. I honestly can’t believe this sort of thing is legal. I know it is, but I just don’t see how. At the very least it is disingenuous.

Now to the parking fee. It seems like the parking fee is easier to justify right? You are getting something for it and parking fees are always an extra expense when you go to a show. A parking fee is for convenience. You show up, you park, it is all good. That is fine. And if I were the only one in the car that would be just peachy. I bought 5 tickets and had four other people with me. We all paid $6. That is $30 for a parking space. That was five dollars less than a t-shirt at the show.

Again I have no problem paying for parking. Well, I do, and in cases where it is possible I like to park really far away for free and walk in. I would rather get some exercise than pay extra money so my car can occupy space. But in this situation, I don’t have a problem paying for a space. I do have a problem paying the price of a Blu-ray for it. The way I see it, the venue owed us five parking spaces. Right up until we parked my friend Jeff was lobbying for parking sideways and then setting up flares in the spots that my SUV won’t cover.  I don’t think it was a bad idea but the guy with the orange flag that was directing me to my space probably would have protested and I didn’t want to be ejected before I even got to see Street Sweeper Social Club.

When we got into the venue there were posters all around saying that you should carpool to the venue because it is better for the environment. I assume that the environment of which they are speaking is that of venue’s wallets because that is what is getting lined here. Right there it is proof positive that they KNOW that people are going to be showing up in groups and that $24 of that $3o is going straight to profit.

There needs to be some way to sort that out when you are on the website buying groups of tickets. I know that the counter-argument to this is that people can lie, but you know if the venue can steal then I can lie. I understand that, like the ticketing services, the venue needs to make money but given the fact that a large beer is $8 and nachos are your first and third children, I doubt the venues are hurting terribly much. That being the case, I think the best way to do it is just to do what they used to and charge a flat fee at the lot. That is what is fair. Or, again, incorporate the parking price into the price of the ticket overall.

I heard that Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) chose Livenation because of Ticketmaster’s well storied egregious fuckings of ticket buyers and he found Livenation’s policies and charges to be more fair. If that is true I imagine that Ticketmaster must rape your mom in front of you while punching your dad in the balls while a henchmen holds you in a half-nelson and a third strip mines your bank account. Then they send a video tape of the proceedings to your girlfriend or little sister.  I looked up ticket prices for the upcoming Green Day show which is being handled by Ticketmaster and while there was a service fee, the prices were much less ridiculous and not even close to twice the face price on the ticket.

I am not sad I saw the show, it was great. NIN was awesome and Dave Navarro is a fucking monster on guitar. I wish I could have used an alternate vendor for the tickets though. I would really like to speak with my wallet on this and show Livenation how much I think they suck by not buying the tickets, but when it is the farewell tour of one of your favorite bands, AND Tom Morello’s new band is playing, they kind of have me over a barrel. How are you not going to see the show?  Moving forward, however, I intend to shout it to the mountain tops and go out of my way to not use Livenation again. I doubt they will ever notice but it makes me feel better. I hope bands in the future recognize the ridiculous gouging and discontinue their use of the service. As Billy Mays might say, ‘There’s got to be a better way!’

Oh and just for completeness here is my receipt for the transaction:

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Nine Inch Nails / Jane's Addiction at Cricket Wireless Pavilion
05/15/09 7:30 PM
Cricket Wireless Pavilion PHOENIX
Number of Tickets:
5 Adult

Lawn Special
Section GA LAWN, Row G63, Seat # 59
Section GA LAWN, Row G63, Seat # 60
Section GA LAWN, Row G63, Seat # 61
Section GA LAWN, Row G63, Seat # 62
Section GA LAWN, Row G63, Seat # 63

Tickets: $38.30
Parking Fee: $30.00
Ticket Fee: $31.25
Total Ticket Charges for Event: $99.55

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Ticket Charges: $38.30
Ticket Fees: $61.25
Delivery Fee for order: $0.00
Total Charge: $99.55

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