My family has been pestering me to see the new Star Wars movie, so I went online to book some tickets. Being a Vrewards member I get discounted tickets and my son also had a pre-paid voucher for a single ticket which he’d gotten from his work.
So, after sorting everything out and entering the voucher number, I noticed the booking fees, one fee for each ticket, which included a booking fee for the voucher. I can understand that there can be costs involved when it comes time to pay for things electronically, but the voucher was for a free ticket and therefore didn’t involve any online bank transactions. So how can they justify including a booking fee for that one?
Looks like I’ll be standing in line instead to avoid the fees.
I have not been to a movie in yonks and a few, but I would not be surprised if there is or soon will be a ‘convenience fee’ to buy tickets at the counter. Experienced that a few years ago when attending a stage show in Melbourne. The choice was to pay the ticketek booking fee or the same amount as a venue convenience fee
Re the voucher attracting a fee, it is a booking fee not a processing fee so they feel quite entitled to extract every last cent they can from ticket buyers.
The wiser one at home finds the situation unusual. From her days in the industry, ticket prices were inclusive of the booking fee. Free tickets were just that. ‘Free’, with nothing extra to pay. Some venues would put a value on the booking fee (but still included in the advertised ticket price) and others simply noted the fee was included in the ticket price. Other than through independent external ticket sellers the booking fee is intended to separate the venue costs related to ticketing from the fixed venue hire, onstage costs or movie hire agreed with the promoter/entertainment provider. It’s an internal accounting exercise. It seems some of us would expect it is included upfront in the ticket price. Certainly the price on the boards at the movie theatre box office should be all inclusive. It’s otherwise misleading.
The airline industry has been around this loop with the ACCC.
Perhaps the ACCC has a different view on movie theatres, or not enough complaints yet to consider any need to get involved.
Adding booking fees (as well as raising them) is another way to increase prices by pointing to ‘look at them, not at me’.
It seems that such breakouts of costs have been done in the name of transparency, eg if the consumer sees where the money goes all is well as for as the ACCC sees it.
