Theatre Capital Improvement Fee?

[Marcel Birgelen]

The concert business makes the movie business look like a bunch of innocent angels when it comes to money.

What about the apparent widespread practice of not repaying service fees? I bought a bunch of tickets via Ticketmaster one day for a magic show my wife wanted to see. At first the engagement was moved to another date, then it was completely cancelled. When they repaid the tickets, they "forgot" the service fees on both tickets, amounting to almost EUR 20. I remember them getting sued over those practices, but I don't know the outcome and the legality of it will depend on jurisdiction.

When I complained, their canned answer was that the "service" they offered to provide your tickets was a separate contract. When I bought tickets from them, I entered into an agreement with them for the tickets and an agreement with the organizer of the event, which, according to them, are two separate agreements. Since they did provide the tickets, they were eligible for the service charges...

Obviously, those kind of practices are even more infuriating as those fees of which nobody knows what they're covering, like those "Convenience Fees". Not withstanding that they hold back your money for months if not even longer.

Even before Covid-19 struck, those exploding ticket prices, the fact that you almost cannot buy tickets anymore like a normal human being, as they're all sold-out within minutes and then appear for like 5 times the price on places like eBay has put me off on going to many of those big-name concerts any longer. I rather spend that money on some lesser known, smaller artists, who perform in smaller venues, where you can actually still look the people in the eye and not only see them on a LED wall with 500ms delay...

Something I find equally unnerving, maybe even more than "hidden service fees" is the dynamic pricing policy of almost everything nowadays. Airline tickets that randomly jump prices the second or third time you query them. Prices that vary, depending on the geo-location of your IP address... Hotel rooms that almost double in price if you happen to look more than twice at the same room. Do the same query with a different IP address and voila, you get the old rate...

[Lyle Romer]

Screw the baggage fees. I fly Southwest when possible...never hassles. I just few AA (when flying into small airports, often, you don't have choices). First checked bag is included. The cargo of the plane is going there regardless of if there is a bag in there or not...that is particularly true on the overhead. If United wants to fee me to death, I won't fly them unless there is no other way.

I too would not like to "see" the fees on a ticket price. Normally, when one buys a movie ticket for x-amount, the consumer is unaware of the amusement tax and all of the other goodies that have been added into that. if a ticket is $10.00, then that is the cost of seeing the movie. When one goes to things like hotels or (airlines) and you see the rate you are buying and then at the end you see all of the crap that gets tacked on, it ticks me off...just build that in on your price and let's have a law that requires it so everyone is playing by the same rules. Then consumers can make informed decisions.

What type of ticket did you have on AA that included first checked bag? I get that with an AAdvantage credit card. I determined that I flew AA enough that the annual fee on the card is lower than it would cost for the checked bags.

[Scott John]

I guess the studios have figured that one out.

One way around it would be incorporating a new corporation that exploits just the lobby. Have this corporation charge a $1 entry fee for everybody coming through the door.

Actually similarly up here where I am due to some liquor laws, film festivals often charge a "membership fee" on each admission because the liquor licence for a members only event is easier and cheaper to deal with. The membership fee goes to the society running the event which is a discrete entity from the venue itself. That isn't in a world where distributors are involved though.

Not that we would be doing either, it was just a question of how it worked with the rules that we didn't know.

Like I have mentioned the capital improvement fee is something part of most of the live venues around here. They charge a flat fee for the venue rental, and then a fee of a couple dollars per ticket sold for capital improvements. It is also a way to share risk with whoever is renting, if they baked that extra into the rental it makes the price higher no matter how well or poorly the event is attended. With it charged per ticket, if the night is a bust the person renting isn't on the hook for that extra amount by being charged assuming a full house. In practicality it is normally invisible to the customer as it is included in the end ticket price and just gets divided after the fact.

[Scott Norwood]

In practicality it is normally invisible to the customer as it is included in the end ticket price and just gets divided after the fact.

In that case, I would have no problem with it as a customer. But you will still need to pay film rental on that.

[Leo Enticknap]

That said, I personally dislike checking bags and generally don't. I have a nice rolly bag that fits perfectly fine in most planes. It won't fit in a CRJ or anything smaller; in those cases, it generally gets checked at the gate.

The main reason I have to is the need to take tools that the TSA won't let me take on as hand luggage. Like Steve, Southwest is my airline of choice, because their tickets are generally no more expensive than those of the other legacies, and you get that free checked bag. They will also take me pretty much anywhere in the country with one stop from an airport only 20 miles from home (Ontario, CA), so that works, too. The only time I flew (for work) with another airline recently was when I had to go to Houghton, MI, just before the pandemic: Southwest could only get me to within 8 hours' drive, whereas Delta to Pellston cut that drive time in half. The flight timings were more convenient, too, saving me two hotel nights in total.

On that trip I did notice people clearly gaming the system with gate checking. Delta appeared to have an unofficial policy of avoiding fights over overhead bin space at all costs, by gate checking pretty much anything you want to, no questions asked or fees charged. A lot of people were showing up with "one carry-on and one personal item" consisting of two large rollaboards. They would take whatever they needed for the flight out of one of them, and then gate check both.

[Steve Guttag]

On this last trip, the mother-in-law handled the plane tickets and I handled lodging. I just noted that with the reservation and when we checked in, we were allotted one checked back for free.

From the AA site:

1st checked bag is complimentary for:

• Eligible AAdvantage^® Aviator^® and Citi^® / AAdvantage^® cardmembers (on domestic American Airlines operated itineraries)
• AAdvantage^® Gold
• oneworld^® Ruby

She may have one of those. I know I used my points on the lodging for the various stays to pretty much have a near free trip.

[Harold Hallikainen]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/o...p-pricing.html

Stop the Hidden-Fee Rip-Off


Aug. 2, 2021

By Max Sarinsky

Mr. Sarinsky is a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.
Want to catch a ballgame at Yankee Stadium? Tickets for Sunday’s game against the Seattle Mariners are being advertised by Ticketmaster, the league’s preferred vendor, for as low as $15.

But tickets cannot be purchased there for that price. After you select seats and reach the payment screen, Ticketmaster notifies you of a $4.20-per-ticket “service fee,” plus a $3.30 “order processing fee.” For a single ticket, the $15 advertised price is in fact $22.50 — an increase of 50 percent.

As most consumers know, such hidden fees are common. Applying a strategy known as “drip pricing,” sellers advertise a deceptively low price that lures in consumers, revealing the full cost — including mandatory surcharges — only once the consumer is on the verge of completing the transaction. The practice is pervasive for concerts and other events that impose ticketing charges, as well as hotel and vacation rentals that charge cleaning or resort fees. With many Americans resuming social and travel plans, their exposure to these fees is resuming as well.

The Federal Trade Commission, a government agency charged with protecting consumers from deceptive, unfair and anticompetitive trade practices, has the authority it needs to ban the practice. Drip pricing has been on the commission’s radar for years, and action is long overdue. The agency’s new Democratic majority — led by its new chair, Lina Khan, an outspoken proponent of consumer rights — recently streamlined the commission’s rule-making process and now appears poised to pass regulations that protect consumers. Drip pricing should be high on its priority list.

Drip pricing has no legitimate business purpose and harms consumers in at least two key ways. First, the practice leads people to spend more money than they would if the full price were communicated upfront. While consumers can in theory walk away once the true price is revealed, studies show that many complete such transactions, given the time and effort that they have already invested. Second, even for consumers who abandon a transaction, drip pricing wastes time and severely complicates efforts to compare the actual prices of competing offers.

Drip pricing can also be damaging to businesses, and it is not a problem that the market will correct on its own. Unless allsellers are required to disclose their full prices upfront, companies that opt for transparency risk losing market share to those that practice deception. After finding in 2015 that customers spent over 20 percent more on tickets on its website when mandatory fees were hidden versus when the full price was disclosed at the start, StubHub resumed its practice of concealing mandatory fees in order to keep up with the competition.

The F.T.C. has threatened action in the past. In 2012, after hosting a conference on drip pricing, the commission warned 22 hotel operators that their advertisement of incomplete prices might constitute an illegally deceptive trade practice. “Consumers are entitled to know in advance the total cost of their hotel stays,” the commission’s then-chairman, Jon Leibowitz, said at the time. But the F.T.C. did not take any enforcement action.

In 2019, at an F.T.C. workshop on online ticket sales, Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter said that “deceptive ticket pricing has passed its boiling point” and warned ticket sellers to consider themselves “on notice” of potential enforcement actions. But again the commission did not take legal action.

Still, facing this pressure from the F.T.C., StubHub and some other ticket providers now offer consumers the option of seeing full ticket prices, with mandatory surcharges included. But requiring consumers to take extra steps to find true pricing information is not a substitute for providing that information as the default.

In the absence of F.T.C. action, other government entities have tried to fill the void. The City of San Francisco, for example, filed suit against the online travel sites JustFly and FlightHub for “unlawful and deceptive business practices,” the District of Columbia sued Marriott, and Nebraska pursued a similar action against Hilton. At the federal level, the Department of Transportation banned drip pricing in the airline industry.

While these efforts are laudable, they are not a substitute for protecting consumers nationwide from hidden fees in all industries. With its broad regulatory mandate — and its previous warnings — the Federal Trade Commission is best equipped to take on that mantle.

That’s why several colleagues from the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law and I filed a petition for rule-making last month, calling on the F.T.C. to ban the use of drip pricing. Under our proposal, all sellers would be required to disclose the full price of a product or service upfront, with any mandatory surcharges included as part of that total price.

A ban on hidden fees and drip pricing would represent a huge win for consumers and improve the functioning of markets where the practice has taken root. For the commission’s new majority, which is eager to protect consumers, such a regulation should be a high priority.

Max Sarinsky is a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.