Roll Over Bruce Springsteen, Tell Eddie Vedder the News...

As if having a near monopoly on concert ticket sales wasn't enough, Ticketmaster has devised a new dastardly way to gouge the wallets of concertgoers everywhere.

The ticket impressarios are back in the news, their imminent merger with Live Nation notwithstanding, as concerned citizens take Ticketmaster to task over what they view as legalized scalping.

Essentially what's happening is that when you go to Ticketmaster's website to purchase tickets to a concert, play, or sporting event, you may be automatically redirected to TicketsNow, a subsidiary website of theirs where you can find tickets, albeit at a massively inflated price. This happened to me a few weeks ago when I tried to score a pair of Fleetwood Mac tickets for my parents. The event in question may have "sold out" within a couple of minutes on Ticketmaster's main site, yet lo and behold, TicketsNow (read: Ticketmaster, owner of TicketsNow) instantly has plenty of tickets up for grabs at two-to-five times the original face value.

Ticketmaster has the audacity to defend this by saying they are "protecting" the consumer.

Read on for more details...

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/01/02/ticketmaster-consumers.html

Two Canadian law firms have already filed a $500 million class-action lawsuit against Ticketmaster on behalf of Toronto-resident Henryk Krajewski, who was redirected to TicketsNow when he tried to get Smashing Pumpkins tickets late last year. According to Ontario law, it is illegal to sell tickets above face value. While the firms are contemplating the addition of Alberta and Manitoba to the lawsuit (both have similar anti-scalping legislation), British Columbians will be left in the lurch as no such laws governing scalping exist in the province. According to the Vancouver Sun, the issue of anti-scalping legislation is currently under review in B.C..

Krajewski's concerns were echoed by none other than Bruce "no-guacamole-dip-for-me, thankyou" Springsteen who issued a statement slamming Ticketmaster for applying this redirection of ticket sales to his own upcoming 2009 tour. Ticketmaster has since issued Springsteen an apology and offered refunds to people who had bought overpriced TicketsNow tickets to his shows. In other words, a blatant admission of guilt and acknowledgement of a breach of trust between the company, artists, and consumers.

One method to curtail the actions of Ticketmaster is to lobby provincial politicians. If enough people speak out against what is happening, steps can be taken in this province to develop anti-scalping legislation.

Another, more grassroots method is to simply refuse to buy tickets at these prices. A friend of mine lives by the philosophy that if a show costs more than $15, it's not worth going to. Most of the concerts being affected by this practice are the big arena shows anyway, which is no big loss. To have to spend half a paycheck only to watch the artist on a jumbo-tron and suffer through the sound quality of two tin-cans strung together is outrageous. If you must go, investigate whether or not you can purchase your tickets at local record shops where you are not going to be exposed to an endless list of service charges.

For shame, Ticketmaster...for shame.