What kills me even more is when I happened across Ticketbastard's scalping site. (Linked to the same Disturbed show's ticket options for comparison sake.)
http://www.ticketsnow.com/Inventory...each-Amphitheatre-in-Pompano-Beach?PID=765149
I guess it's true what they say. If you can't beat 'em, at least make sure your raping those who are raping the people you can't rape yourself.
This blows me away more than anything. TicketBastard created a scalper site from which they can rape buyers even more. Am I the only one who sees that as a profound conflict of interest? They get people at TicketsNow to buy choice seats then sell them at 3-4 times face value. It's an astounding feat of legerdemain that probably makes David Copperfield jealous.
To give you an idea how high the fees are on the Bastard, we bought tickets to see In This Moment in Grand Rapids on Feb. 19. They were listed for $13 apiece. Sweet. However, by the time the Bastard tacks on all of its "convenience" fees and other charges, the total for two $13 tickets was $41.05. In other words, if we had purchased the tickets from T-B, we would have purchased a THIRD ticket for the price of our two -- a ticket we couldn't keep that was more like a donation to the Corporate Machine That Will Not Die.
So we went to a local, independent CD store and bought the tickets from him -- at face value, no fees. We saved nearly $20 buying locally as opposed to using T-B.
I have never in my life encountered such a blatant ripoff of the public. TicketBastard makes the U.S. government look like a bunch of Girl Scouts hawking cookies.
LiveNation is a nice alternative, generally. When TicketBastard indicated no tickets to Dropkick Murphys were available for their Detroit show (well, their scalper site had them listed for 3-4 times face value even though the main site said none were available), LiveNation still had some for sale.
Every time I do business with T-B I feel like I need to take a shower to rid myself of the filth.
Bill
P.S. One other thing about T-B that I find laughable: their "security check" captcha that one must type in to buy tickets. Why? According to T-B: "Automated programs known as "Bots" cannot read distorted text as well as humans. The Security Check helps prevent automated programs from blocking other customers from getting tickets." The reason why that makes me laugh is because no "Bots" are necessary these days. Scalpers have armies of human beings buying tickets, typing in the stupid captcha letters, to grab up tickets to turn around and sell for many times their face value. Who is T-B kidding? Bots my ass!
