Why Ticketmaster Should Get Coal for Christmas

[A Note To My Readers: The following is a rant. It contributes nothing meaningful or helpful about the world of acting. If you have no desire to see me flail about like a 4-year-old having a tantrum, by all means, skip this post.]

Tickmaster? More like Ticketbastard.

I just purchased tickets for the live staging of Paul Reuben's "The Pee-wee Herman Show". Tickets were only available through Ticketmaster. The crappiest seats in the theater were listed at $38.50. Already too much to spend, but $20 less than the orchestra seats, and well, I really want to see Pee-wee Herman live, so I ignored the financial angel on my shoulder and pulled out my debit card.

To find available tickets I had to click through each show date, choose the cheapest ticket, press a submit button, fill out a captcha (those human verification fields with the drunken letters), only to discover that there were no seats available for that date. I did this about 9 times before finding a seat in my price-range.

Five minutes of - filling out forms, confirming seats, being offered purchase insurance (because they don't issue refunds), refusing mailing lists, verifying my credit card twice, etc - later, I found myself at the order confirmation page:

The Pee-wee Herman Show
Full Price Ticket	US $38.50 x 1
Convenience Charge	US $5.00 x 1
Delivery (Will Call)	No Charge
Order Processing Fee	US $4.80
Total Charges	US $48.30

1. Convenience charge? Really? What was convenient about this experience? You are the only place selling tickets so in no way are you particularly convenient. In fact it would have been much more convenient for me to call a theater, talk to a person at the box office, and ask for the best available cheap seat. So no, I don't want to give you $5 for what was actually inconvenient.
2. No charge for will call? That's cool. Just don't be so proud about it. Just because you would have unreasonably charged me $5 for mailing me my tickets doesn't make you some kind of hero for doing the right thing.
3. Order processing fee? What minimum wage employee worked for a whole hour so that my order could be processed? Not a one. If that's what the credit card company is charging you to run my card, then eat the costs like any other company.

Now, if it actually costs TicketMaster $9.80 to cover costs for every ticket they sell then fine, list every ticket as $10 more. Then let the free market sort it out. I guarantee if there is another ticketing option available, people will go with that.

Don't make your customers jump through 10 minutes of searching for a show with available seats, 5 minutes of form-filling-out, to only then reveal your $10 bullshit charge on the very last screen. At this point your customer has invested so much time in the process that they'll submit to anything just so they can get their tickets and get on with their lives. That's not how you develop loyal customers - nope, that sort of behavior puts you on Santa's naughty list.