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Why is it so difficult to buy tickets in Australia? It sometimes feels like you’d have a better chance of buying a ticket to Mars than successfully negotiating the purchase of a ticket to an A-League game.
Just over a week ago I tried to buy a couple of tickets to the upcoming Sydney derby in March.
It was a members pre-sale and having had countless issues with Ticketek in the past, I assumed there’d be a problem with this transaction.
Naturally I wasn’t disappointed.
After logging in online with the dedicated members password, I navigated to the ‘Choose Your Tickets’ page easily enough.
Unfortunately I could only select the ‘best available’ tickets and not the actual bay I wanted to sit in, which happened to be halfway around the other side of the ground.
Dreading the call to Ticketek, I knew exactly the conversation which would soon follow.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the disinterested voice down the line, before proceeding to suggest I “contact the club” and hanging up on me.
So I did exactly that, and after a few hours back and forth – and a phone call from the club to Ticketek – eventually I managed to ring back several hours later to purchase the specific tickets I wanted.
For that privilege I was charged more than $10 in transaction fees, despite the fact the tickets were emailed to me to print myself (I wasn’t offered an alternative).
My gripe is not that this happened to me – is there anyone in Australia who hasn’t suffered similar problems at the hands of Ticketek – but the fact that it happens at all.
Why do we continually put up with such abysmal service from Ticketek and its partner in the ticketing duopoly, Ticketmaster?
Partly because they’ve cornered market, no doubt, and partly because most Australians tend to be as apathetic about consumer rights as they are about pretty much everything else.
In December 2011, the Federal Court handed down a $2.5 million fine to Ticketek for engaging in anti-competitive practices.
It was small change for a company which rakes in multimillion dollar profits, but nonetheless an acknowledgement that Ticketek uses its dominant market position to try and deter small-time competitors from doing business.
A recent in-depth study by consumer organisation CHOICE found that both Ticketek and Ticketmaster were essentially charging double-dip commissions – taking a payment from promoters to handle ticket sales, then passing on additional fees to consumers for that exact same handling.
Even when the costs aren’t being added so sneakily, the naked profiteering is still the same.
It’s routine for both companies to charge up to four times the standard retail rate to post tickets through the mail.
That’s to say nothing of the service charges added for buying tickets online – a process which should ostensibly be automated and therefore cuts down on salaries.
But even when you manage to speak to an actual human, the chances of them having any idea what you’re talking about appear to be next to nought.
Trying to buy tickets in the first season of the A-League was a nightmare, with some outlets incredulous that the competition even existed.
Many fans got around it by becoming season ticket holders, but what’s the point of being a member when one of the main benefits is supposed to be the ability to buy extra tickets?
Heaven help us when the Asian Cup rolls around, because it’s hard enough to buy the actual ticket you want to a domestic fixture.
I acknowledge that outlets sell tickets to a dizzying array of events, but the sheer ignorance of the products they’re peddling is grating.
Sadly, nothing much will change.
We’ll complain on social media as these companies rip us off blind, and hand over our hard-earned to a couple of ticket agencies who’ve done nothing to deserve it.