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Decent Quality Since 1847

That's the Ticket

11/10/2014

15 Comments

 
I'm in Chicago at the moment, and while the elves watch over the homestead, I'm making my way about town here.  I bought a ticket over the phone for that oft-mentioned and quite wonderful Writers Theatre in Glencoe, where they currently have the Midwest premiere of an intriguing-sounding play, Isaac's Eye, by Lucas Hnath, about a tense and witty battle between Isaac Newton and scientist Robert Hooke.  Rather than their main theater, it's being produced in their original, small location (small as in, literally, the back of a bookstore) and sounds intriguingly staged.

I love the Writers Theatre, which is quite a treasure, often getting rave reviews from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal who make special visits to the tiny company  Jessie Mueller, who won a Tony Award as Best Actress in a musical this year for Beautiful, got her start at the Writers Theatre just a few years ago in 2010,  The quality of the Writers Theatre is consistently great, the organization is terrific.  After making the phone order, though, I was gnawed by something.  It was such a small matter which is why it didn't strike me immediately -- the $5 handling charge on a ticket, which they're not even mailing out, just holding on to at the box office.  Though I'd like to see the play, I'm really only going so that I can have dinner and spend the evening with my aunt, her husband, and my cousin.  Otherwise, I may have evening called back to cancel it, regardless of its smallness, on general principle.

I did call back, though, to at least voice my complaint.  I know it's now fairly-common practice for theaters, I see it in Los Angeles often, though hardly all the time, but just because people accept it unthinkingly doesn't make it right.  If a theater does provide an actual, special service for something, I can maybe see a handling fee -- but they're not.  You're buying their product.  If you went to buy groceries, imagine the store charging you a handling fee to bag them.  When you phone in an order for Chinese food or pizza to pick up, imagine if they charged you for merely calling in.  (They do charge for delivery, but...well, they have to hire someone who is actually delivering it.)  The cost of mailing out a theater ticket is the stamp, envelope and a minute and 15 seconds to address it. A business should accept that sale as the cost of business and suck up the price.  Or charge a buck. At the most, two bucks.  But why on earth would any business charge customers for the simple act of buying your product??  Yes, the arts are generally struggling and need the money -- but that's all the more reason not to have a handling charge and erect that barrier to making the sale.

Anyway, as I said, I did call back and asked to speak with the manager.  The call went something like this.

Me:  "I just called a few minutes ago and bought a ticket. It including a $5 handling fee.  And the more I thought about it, the more bothered I was.  You're not even mailing out the ticket, just holding it at the box office."

Writers Theatre:  “We have the charge because it helps pay for the cost of having the phone line for ticket orders, and to pay for the employee handling the phone order.”

Me:  “Excuse me, but with all due respect that’s ridiculous.  Every business has a phone line.  And you’d be paying for that employee in the box office whether people called or not.  If I buy a pair of shoes, they don’t charge me a handling fee.  If I buy any product, they don’t charge for just buying their product.  You're charging me for the honor of buying the product.”

Writers Theatre:  “We do make it free of charge for people who come directly to the box office.”

Me:  “That's great, but just to be clear, it’s no more difficult selling a ticket over the phone than to sell a ticket at the box office.  As I said, they’re not evening mailing it out, just holding the ticket.  It's the exact same thing.”

Writers Theatre:  “I hear what you’re saying, but this is a standard charge in the theater community.”

Me:  “I like supporting the arts, which need the income, so I’m glad that the money is going to such good groups who need it.  And I understand that it's regularly done by many theaters.  I know that.  And they're all is wrong to do it.  It’s…well, it’s offensive.”

Writers Theatre:  “One of the things about the charge for ordering over the phone or buying tickets online is that it allows us to keep our ticket prices lower.”

Me:  :Honestly, that’s a far better answer than telling me that it’s for phone lines and paying the employee taking the call.  That’s what you should tell people.  That the fee helps keeps costs down, not that it’s ‘for the phone line.’”

Writers Theatre:  Well, thank you, I’m glad you like that reason.

Me:  “Just to be clear, I only said it’s a better reason than the others.  It’s still a bad reason.“

Writers Theatre:  “I understand what you’re saying, and I’ll pass your thoughts along to the executives here.  But it’s just one of a list of reasons that we have.”
, 
Me:  “I’m sure.  And all those reasons would be wrong.”

Writers Theatre:  “I do understand, and appreciate you letting us know your thoughts.  I’ll let others know so that we can make future decisions.”

As you can see, I didn’t get anywhere.  I’d have thought that after spending so much time calling to voice my complaint, and politely, no yelling or name-calling, the manager would have reversed the charge.  Particularly since it wasn't just $5 on my end, but only $5 on theirs.  But no.  And at some point, though, you have to accept a losing battle, so I said goodbye…

Yes, it is a fairly common fee these days (though not standard), and my comments here refer to all such places, not just the Writers Theatre, which in almost all other ways is tremendous, but it’s still wrong.  And it's offensive as a concept, bordering on a scam -- because they're charging (most especially as in this case) for not providing any special added benefit, but just a fee to sell you their product, while positioning it as a "service."  And the evidence this is totally useless, bordering on scam is that the best reason they can come up with to defend it is -- "We need the fee to pay for a phone line."  You know if they had an actual, really valid reason they would have said it, first thing, not offered mumbo-jumbo.

(By the way, as for the "best" of their bad reasons, that it supposedly helps keep the cost of tickets down -- the reality is that in practice it really doesn't.  I suspect that far, far more people buy their individual tickets over the phone and online, rather than walking up to the box-office where there's no "handling fee," so the "benefits" of lower prices are almost non-existent)

All this has always bothered me enough that there actually have been a few times when the fee for other events (not the Writers Theatre) was so egregious -- often 20% of the ticket cost, just for buying the ticket! -- that I cancelled the phone order on general principle.  Sometimes I did still buy the ticket but went to the box office instead.  But I have just ignored a few events completely since they were ones I was only moderately interested in, and the fee was offensive enough to make it not worth buying.  Yes, it's a small part of the overall cost, but a part that's wrong and pointless and just jacking up the price, and sometimes "on general principle" does kick in.

Theaters are selling tickets to their shows.  Whatever way they sell their tickets is up to them,  But it's still "selling their tickets."  And charging a customer for the right to buy your product is ridiculous.  And wrong.  Whatever "reasons" you come up with.  Mailing out a ticket is not a "service' any more than the time, effort and cost of bagging up groceries or gift-wrapping a book. It's the cost of doing business and making a sale.  And to suggest otherwise -- especially to the point of trying to explain it's for having a phone line -- is not only offensive, but (as I've noted) on the good side of scam.

And besides, selling tickets over the phone and especially online is as much a service for the theater as for the patrons.  In fact it's probably a far greater service to the theater.  Online selling lets the box-office handle orders at its leisure whenever most convenient, and is much faster, eliminating long, time-consuming conversations about dates and availabilities and seat location.  And most importantly, both services bring in money immediately, and make the sale before a customer has a chance to change his or her mind.  No waiting and hoping until a potential customer can make it to the box office.  And they charge you for what benefits them??  Seriously...?

(Of course, even if they were offering a service to make it easier for customers to buy their product -- isn't that what every business should be doing All The Time?!!! )

As I said, if an arts organization which does struggle for money wants to cover the actual cost of a stamp and envelope, fine, I can grasp that.  I think it's pennywise and pound foolish, but I get it.  And if they do provide some actual, special service, fine, too.  And if a third-party company is charging a fee for online orders because the theater isn't able to -- I get that, too, since selling tickets is their product, and the fee is their only source of income, much as I think they often vastly overcharge.  But for a theater itself (which you'd think would be thrilled to get the money direct and immediate rather than go through a third-party) to try to make a profit on merely selling the ticket?  To charge for actually just selling you their product?  Indeed most especially when they just sell the ticket and simply hold it at the box office. Sorry, that's just wrong.

Yes, I know the amount charged to an individual is small compared to what a theater can accumulate from all such fees, which ultimately helps the organization more than it negatively impacts the individual. But then, that's true for most scams -- even the ones that are borderline and small.  And how they count on getting away with it.
15 Comments
Randy @ WCG link
11/10/2014 09:07:40 am

The fact that this handling fee is charged when ordering tickets online where everything is automated makes it even more annoying. I'd prefer they just roll the fee into the ticket price rather than add it on as a fee -- placing an order without the handling fee will make you feel like you got a deal. Plus, they'll make the extra amount on EVERY ticket they sell, not just the ones ordered by phone or online.

Reply
David Peattie
11/10/2014 10:37:11 pm

I would tend to agree. I don't understand why they think that when they want to charge more, it'd be better to just include that in the overall price instead of breaking it down and labelling something a "fee" for this or that. Don't they get that sooner or later, someone will notice and start thinking about it and question it? Thus, forcing them to come up with some lame rationale to try to justify it?

Reply
Robert Elisberg
11/10/2014 09:41:44 am

Thanks for your note. Indeed, there is close to nothing about this faux "handling fee" charges that isn't offensive and unjustifiable, which is why I refer to as a borderline scam.

Reply
Dave Humphreys
11/10/2014 10:17:07 am

Good for you, Bob. I think it's great when people don't just let things like this slide and at the same time don't come across as a crank. It struck me, too, that it's a bizarre piece of logic when they're so much as saying "we raise our prices to keep prices down".

Reply
Robert Elisberg
11/10/2014 12:16:20 pm

Thanks. I realized long ago that people immediately stop listening when you simply attack them, even when the complaint is legitimate.

There's a whimsical thing at play here, too. Had the manager simply said "It's our policy, but I appreciate your concern and we're going to reimburse your $5," I'd probably have appreciated their response, left the issue there, and kept my annoyance for writing about another day. As it was, the article is now on the Huffington Post, where they subsequently also made it a Featured Post, and I'll probably have 1,000 people or so read it here, as well. And it's been linked to on several news sites. All because they chose to keep their $5. Not that I think it'll have much impact, but that's hardly a great use of five bucks.

Again, though, to be clear, the Writers Theatre is a terrific company, and this was about the faux-practice in general, at all theaters.

Reply
Jerry
11/10/2014 03:17:39 pm

A related problem is venues that don't open their box offices. So they'll announce that tickets are available for an event, but only through Ticketmaster, and all of the sudden you're supposed to pay $10 in "convenience charges" for a $20 ticket.

Reply
Joe
11/10/2014 10:49:21 pm

I used to work for a company than ran movie theatres. The ticket revenues went to movie distributors and such and the theatre kept maybe 10% of the money. A separate fee would be kept 100% by the theatre.

Reply
Robert Elisberg
11/10/2014 10:52:51 pm

Thanks for the new comments. Yes, one-off concert events are additional and related issues to ongoing theater productions. With concert, especially, a faux-"service" where you pay 50% of the ticket price of an event for the honor to buy the ticket is not only, of course, galling an just on the good side of scam, but a service that benefits the venue/seller far more than the customer. And they do it because, alas, it works. That doesn't make it right, just "understandable."

Reply
Robert Elisberg
11/10/2014 11:04:50 pm

Joe, thanks for your note. I used to work at Universal Pictures. Though movie theaters are a different fish than "service fees," it's an interesting situation on its own. The split fees could sometimes be negotiated, though the bulk was indeed kept by the distributors, sometimes the vast bulk. Where movie theaters tend to make their money is the concessions, of which they keep 100%. It's somewhat related to music artists on tour who make most of their money selling the t-shirts and other such paraphernalia.

Reply
Michael Harbour
11/11/2014 01:14:08 am

I find them especially offensive when there is absolutely no way to purchase a ticket without an additional fee. Just be friggin' honest about the ticket price, I say.

I have definitely abandoned some ticket purchases because the additional fees pushed the actual ticket price far enough above the advertised ticket price that I didn't find the purchase to be a good value anymore. So the additional fees in these cases accomplished 3 things:

1. Losing a sale
2. Establishing distrust
3. Losing goodwill

Reply
Robert Elisberg
11/11/2014 04:23:43 am

Michael, thanks for the comment. I find pretty much nothing to disagree with you there. Indeed, what I found so wrong-headed in this particular case is that they were doing almost literally nothing, just taking the order and holding on to the ticket -- yet charging for the service. (A service which benefits the theater more...)

Reply
David Rosenberg
11/11/2014 10:36:33 am

I've been to theaters where they charge a handling fee even though I'm buying a ticket AT THE BOX OFFICE ITSELF! How's that for gall?

Reply
Robert Elisberg
11/11/2014 12:47:00 pm

David, thanks for that -- I had to read the sentence twice before I could get my head around it. Stunning. You must have REALLY wanted to see those plays rather than walk away...

Reply
Patrick Ravey
11/11/2014 10:30:55 pm

It's what Joe said: generally, fees charged separately from the stated price of the ticket are not accounted as part of the gross earnings for a show and therefore, not subject to distribution to those who share in royalties/fees from the gross. It started with popular music ticket sales and has spread everywhere.

Reply
Robert Elisberg
11/11/2014 10:44:44 pm


Patrick, thanks. Just to clarify, what Joe was referring to with movie theaters was slightly different -- movie theaters still get a percentage of the ticket sales (often a lot, sometimes small), but keep all the concessions. What you're noting here is an additional and pointed explanation for it occurring in theaters (and at music events).

I agree with you that it pertains to theaters, though I think slightly less-so with regional theaters. Distributions for royalties definitely still do exist, though on a much smaller level. Still, every dollar does count... (I'm not suggesting this isn't a reason -- it is. Just that I think it's one of several reasons.)

Much as consumers should be annoyed, it's clear that those in a position to get royalties should be perhaps even more so. Additionally, I've heard of protests by occasional rock stars bothered at the not-so-hidden jacking up of prices for fans.

Reply



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    Robert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. 

    Elisberg is a two-time recipient of the Lucille Ball Award for comedy screenwriting. He's written for film, TV, the stage, and two best-selling novels, is a regular columnist for the Writers Guild of America and was for
    the Huffington Post.  Among his other writing, he has a long-time column on technology (which he sometimes understands), and co-wrote a book on world travel.  As a lyricist, he is a member of ASCAP, and has contributed to numerous publications.



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