Today I bought Taylor Swift tickets. These said tickets were not supposed to go on sale until later on next month, the 4th of February to be exact. So the question now is how was I able to purchase them? Because I have an American Express credit card. Not only was I allowed to buy them in advance, five days in advance, but I was able to buy six of them. At 12:02 p.m., I pressed the purchase button and even then I was beyond the orchestra pit. It cost me $100 dollars per ticket to still be that far away from the stage. Fifteen of that $100 dollars went towards a processing fee. I had to pay for them to allow me to wait five minutes as the computer went through a crazy race against the rest of the world to pull up the next six available seats for a concert that was only now in the pre-sale ticket stage.
Six hundred dollars later I had what I wanted, but as I sat there staring at the computer screen, I had to question why it was all so hard. At the end I wanted to try and see how much my crazy race had saved me. I asked for the same amount of tickets in the best possible seating readily available. I then pressed continue. A waiting screen was what met my eyes. I had a 23 minute long wait before they would even allow me the opportunity to purchase the tickets. That was five minutes after the pre-sale opportunity had begun. By the time thirty minutes had passed the website pushed me back to the screen I had just left, saying that my attempt had failed. I was relieved that I had panicked and rushed, but I was also annoyed. Why did I have to stress out for two hours before the venue even opened? Why did I have to type furiously with my heart pounding as I raced against time? Shouldn't seeing the artists that enliven our lives, change them, make them better, be simpler and less expensive? I think that it should.
Why does it cost so much to buy a ticket? The size of the theatre alone, multiplied by between $70-$100 dollars per seat would bring in millions. Add to that the parking fee that they charge, the mass amount of food, drink, and concert paraphernalia would bring in an additional handful of cash. And the reason that they charge this much is simply because they can. They try to suck as much money from the situation as humanly possible, applying hidden fees to something that is already incredibly expensive. T-shirts are $30 dollars a pop, sometimes more depending on who is playing. I'm surprised they don't charge you to use the bathrooms.
I paid that much money for seats I wasn't even allowed to choose. I took what was handed to me because that was my only option. In fact, I didn't even have time to call any of my friends and make sure that $100 dollars for a ticket was okay by them because in the bottom right-hand corner my countdown of two minutes was coming to an end. I understand their reasoning behind a countdown; they want to keep seats available for those who are purchasing tickets, but the countdown is only added pressure to an already stressful situation. I don't like being timed, especially when they are going to take $15 dollars of my money to 'process' my purchase. If I'm paying them to process my ticket they should at least allow me the time to evaluate the ticket I'm purchasing.
I'm a college student and I'm not made out of money, but apparently I'm supposed to be in order to purchase tickets. The purchase of all the tickets has to be on one card. In this case, a nearly $600 dollar charge was made to my card, something that I had to prepare myself for. I had to buy all the tickets together because that was the only way we would all get seats together. They should make purchasing tickets easier on everyone and allow more than one credit card to purchase, thus allowing friends to buy tickets together without killing off one friend's bank account.
Going to see someone in concert is an amazing experience, and one that I am more than willing to pay to see. My issue rests in how difficult and excessively expensive they make it. I shouldn't have to worry about the possibility of getting in the nose-bleed section when I'm supposed to be getting a pre-sale. I shouldn't have to pay fifteen dollars for them to press an approve button that allows my purchase to go through. But I did, and I will, and they will forever continue to charge a ridiculous amount for ridiculous things. At least, in the end, I can rest easy knowing I'm not the only one that suffers while they roll in the dough.
