What Are Service Fees On 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 homo holds upwards 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 e'er fees attached: treatment fees, service fees, venue fees. Sometimes they're clear, sometimes they're hidden — only they ever increase the cost.

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

Check out more ticket-buying tips from Consumer Reports

A Few Fees To Know

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

"Across the service fee you have things like order-processing fees, or delivery fees, or something called a facility accuse. A facility charge, for example, is a fee that'south prepare by the venue where the sports upshot or the concert is going to be taking place. This is a fee that the venue gets 100 percent of.

"And so there'due south guild-processing fees. If you lodge something online, it'due south going to be easier for yous than going to the bodily ticket counter to buy your ticket. These order-processing fees are avoidable. ... If you lot live close enough to maybe the venue or somewhere where they sell the tickets physically, you just go in that location rather than ordering them online."

Are These Fees Worth The Hassle?

"We've seen that sometimes [fees] can add up to 20 pct of the confront value of a ticket. Only in that location'southward too something to be said virtually what we might 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 done in an unclear fashion, or when people are being shady well-nigh it, then that's when y'all start going into this thought of being scammed. And then at that place's also the idea of existence merely defrauded when yous get and you purchase tickets from entities that you're not sure of that aren't vetted, and y'all're not really sure whether or not the ticket that you're receiving is going to exist a working ticket."

When In Incertitude About A Ticket, Try To Verify

"You also want to make sure that the entity that's selling you this ticket — especially if you're doing information technology online or over the telephone — is legitimate," Blanco says. "Then you desire to look and make sure that they're role of a member clan for ticket sellers, you desire to make sure that there's other folks that you know of, or you tin can expect upwardly comments [from people] who have dealt with this company. You lot want to be wary of fly-by-night people that don't take phone numbers where you lot tin verify."

What Tin can Consumers Do?

"The final conclusion ... is up to the consumer and what they can beget and what they can feel comfortable with. Simply the fact of the thing is that a lot of these fees are hidden, or at least they're non explained clearly enough at the time of the purchase," Blanco says. "Consumer Reports has a new action called 'What the Fee?!' We're looking for people'southward reactions to being nickeled and dimed by fees. We become a lot of complaints, non only on tickets to shows and sporting events, but airlines, cablevision — there's tons of fees that are existence charged on us all the fourth dimension and that we don't get a clear idea of what it is that nosotros're paying for.

"And so I call up at the end of the day, at that place actually has to exist a movement, a consumer move, and consumers need to say that they're fed up. If you feel like the toll wasn't clearly explained to you, and so you become charged a fee at the very end, I think in that location'southward got to be a point where yous say, 'No, this wasn't honest the style that this was presented to me, so I am not going to purchase this.' "

Julia Corcoran produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Jack Mitchell adapted it for the web.

This segment aired on November 6, 2018.