Online ticket sellers agree to display fees upfront

Rights, Scams and Politics

Updated on 01 February 2014 | 14 Comments

Some of the biggest online ticket retailers will now display their delivery and booking fees upfront.

Seven online ticket retailers have agreed to display their delivery and booking fees upfront.

All compulsory charges, such as delivery costs and booking fees, will be made clear from the outset by ATG Tickets, BH Live Tickets, See Tickets, Stargreen, Ticketmaster, Ticket Soup and Ticket Web.

See Tickets has already put the changes in place, while Ticket Soup has promised to update its website this week. ATG, meanwhile, has pledged to get its website up to speed by March.

The agreement follows the Play Fair on Ticket Fees campaign by Which? So far more than 37,000 people have pledged their support for the campaign.

However, Which? wants the firms to go further and justify the fees they charge. The consumer champion’s research found that in some cases people were hit with extra charges worth more than a third of the ticket’s face value. It found examples of people being charged up to £2.50 to print the tickets out at home or £3 to pick them up from the box office.

There are no regulations that limit what ticket retailers can charge for these additional ‘services’. However the rules of the Committee of Advertising Practice Code (which is administered by the Advertising Standards Authority) clearly state that all compulsory fees should be disclosed at the outset.

The Advertising Standards Authority said that it has been conducting “comprehensive enforcement work” since last September to ensure ticket sellers are upfront about the fees they charge, having assessed 130 websites so far. Now 55 ticket sellers have amended their ticket pricing as a result. It is now looking at regional theatre sites; around half of the 650 sites need to make changes to fall into line with the rules.

What do you think? Have you been caught out by hidden charges? Should these charges be capped? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the Comments box below.

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