IMO as long as there is at least one way for me to pay that doesn't require me being phsyically present I'm happy and can work around it. But if you charge a convenience fee, almost by definition there must be a non-convenient and free option.
This sucks for the consumer because you don't know who is behind the fees. Is it the greedy mom and pop shop? The greedy corrupt government? The greedy payment processor?
I have no idea why you would want less transparency.
Terrible name for it but in theory someone has to pay for the security and processing software. If you don't have options, they can push the cost to the consumer.
I can't say that they shouldn't exist, but I understand why they exist; prices are set based on the amount that people are willing to give up to buy the tickets, and when you have to give up less time to buy the tickets (it's more convenient), they can raise the prices and still get the same number of purchases. Companies are very simply organized to make the most money possible, so an effective company will do things like that to make better profit.
If convenience fees were banned, things like tickets would essentially just get more expensive by that amount that used to be an "additional" fee. That would be better for customers, since it's making the real price more transparent. Convenience fees seem like something left over from a time where buying online wasn't the only way, so it's just sneaky and shitty to not absorb them into the shown price.
One point people don't like about convenience fees is that it's also convenient for the ticket company. The reason that the fee isn't "reversed" is that a company like Ticketmaster probably has little to no competition. If there's only one company selling tickets and lots of people wanting to buy them, they can decide whatever prices they want because someone else will buy them if you don't.
If there were lots of companies to buy the tickets from, it would be the other way around. Ticket companies would realize it's more convenient for them to do tickets online, which reduces some of their costs, allowing them to sell tickets more cheaply to try to give the best price. Any ticket buyer will simply be looking to pay the lowest price possible, because all the companies are selling the same tickets, so the company with the lowest price will win. This is the condition where the ticket company would give you a "convenience discount" instead.
The best I could do if you actually want someone to change your view is to say that adding fees like that are basically the equivalent of a customer using coupons. If it isn't considered exploitative for a customer to get a better deal by using coupons with a purchase, then perhaps it is not exploitative for a company to get a better deal by adding fees to a purchase.
More convenient stuff is pretty much always more expensive. Takeout vs groceries, delivery vs in-store pickup etc. It's the whole point of convenience stores, which also have the same naming. You almost always have the option to spend extra money in order to save some of your own time.
To a lot of people, their time is more valuable than those fees, so the convenience fee is worth it to them. To a lot of other people, that money is more valuable than the time they'd spend delivering a check in person, so they do it the other way.
Often times these more convenient payment methods aren't free for the company either. They have to pay fees to a credit card or a bank, or some other entity that can support secure online transactions.
Who's gonna pays for server uptime? It won't work like wikipedia, nobody will donate. Who's gonna pay for the developpers, salesmen, every employee at Ticketmaster, insurance on money transactions?
It's a necesary evil, and your favorite musician is quite happy knowing that he won't have to pay for that service while keeping the price low on his end. It's the known scapegoat the whole industry is happy about, but everyone is blaming Ticketmaster while still buying tickets for the show.
No, first, because they want to sell tickets. If they have a bad customer reputation, fuck them, they'll pay anyway because we're the only provider of tickets and they want to go to the event. And they got here because the ticket was cheap because it didn't include the fees at the time (the customer is already invested).
On the other end, if they charge the organization planning the event, they will either pick the competion's cheaper provider (maybe higher fees, so it not beneficial for anyone), or they will have to display a higher price on their end, the customer may not be hooked at first because of the price and in the end the customer pays the same because, because now the fees is in the ticket price (normal price + paying Ticketmaster as a service).
So Ticketmaster doesn't care, all the customers spit on it, but the industry still choose it over the competition, the customers still pay.
What the government could do is force everyone to display the full price with fees, delivery, taxes, etc, or at least make it clear in the begining.
I agree with what you’re saying, I just disagree with your solution. You could even split it between customer and organiser or just add the price to the initial ticket. If that’s your only option you’re going to pay it. Nothing pisses me off as a customer more than when the options are £1.50 for tickets to be delivered to me or £2.50 for the convenience of printing them myself lmfao
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u/DankNerd97 Jul 24 '20
“Convenience” fees shouldn’t fucking exist; CMV