How To Avoid Paying Service Fees For Concert Tickets

What That 'Service Fee' Tacked Onto Your Ticket Is Really For 06:44

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A man holds up tickets to sell or swap outside a venue at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on Aug. 19, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images) — A man holds up tickets to sell or swap exterior a venue at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on Aug. 19, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

When you buy tickets for concerts or plays or fifty-fifty movies, there are almost always fees fastened: treatment fees, service fees, venue fees. Sometimes they're clear, sometimes they're subconscious — but they always increase the cost.

Here & At present's Jeremy Hobson gets an explanation of these fees and what consumers can do to buy wisely from Consumer Reports author Octavio Blanco (@OctavioNYC).

Check out more ticket-buying tips from Consumer Reports

A Few Fees To Know

"Service fees are essentially what help companies like Ticketmaster to turn a profit. They're basically fees that get added onto the base of operations cost of whatever your ticket is and it helps them to stay in business," Blanco says.

"Beyond the service fee you have things like lodge-processing fees, or delivery fees, or something chosen a facility charge. A facility charge, for example, is a fee that'due south fix past the venue where the sports result or the concert is going to be taking place. This is a fee that the venue gets 100 percent of.

"Then in that location's order-processing fees. If you gild something online, information technology's going to exist easier for yous than going to the actual ticket counter to purchase your ticket. These lodge-processing fees are avoidable. ... If you live shut plenty to possibly the venue or somewhere where they sell the tickets physically, you just get there rather than ordering them online."

Are These Fees Worth The Hassle?

"Nosotros've seen that sometimes [fees] tin add up to twenty percent of the face value of a ticket. But there's as well something to be said well-nigh what nosotros might telephone call a legitimate ticket seller versus a scammer," Blanco says. "When people are selling really hot tickets, for example, they may be adding all kinds of fees. So when those things are washed in an unclear way, or when people are being shady most information technology, then that's when you outset going into this idea of being scammed. And and then there's also the thought of being just defrauded when you get and you lot buy tickets from entities that you lot're non sure of that aren't vetted, and you lot're not really sure whether or not the ticket that you're receiving is going to exist a working ticket."

When In Doubt Nigh A Ticket, Try To Verify

"You lot too want to make sure that the entity that's selling you this ticket — specially if you're doing it online or over the phone — is legitimate," Blanco says. "So yous want to await and brand certain that they're part of a member association for ticket sellers, y'all want to make sure that there's other folks that yous know of, or you tin expect up comments [from people] who accept dealt with this visitor. You want to be wary of fly-by-night people that don't have phone numbers where y'all can verify."

What Tin can Consumers Do?

"The concluding decision ... is up to the consumer and what they can afford and what they can feel comfy with. But the fact of the matter is that a lot of these fees are hidden, or at least they're non explained clearly enough at the fourth dimension of the buy," Blanco says. "Consumer Reports has a new action called 'What the Fee?!' Nosotros're looking for people'due south reactions to being nickeled and dimed by fees. We get a lot of complaints, not merely on tickets to shows and sporting events, but airlines, cablevision — there's tons of fees that are being charged on the states all the time and that we don't become a clear idea of what it is that we're paying for.

"So I think at the cease of the day, in that location really has to exist a move, a consumer motion, and consumers need to say that they're fed upwardly. If you lot feel like the price wasn't clearly explained to you lot, and then y'all get charged a fee at the very end, I recollect there'due south got to be a point where you say, 'No, this wasn't honest the way that this was presented to me, so I am not going to purchase this.' "

Julia Corcoran produced and edited this interview for circulate. Jack Mitchell adjusted it for the spider web.

This segment aired on Nov half-dozen, 2018.