We’ve all been there, excitedly buying tickets for an upcoming event, only to find that the cost has practically doubled when it comes time to pay. It can sap your enthusiasm, or maybe even cause you to cancel the transaction, seeing the price jump up like that at the last moment.
Here at The Smith Center, we’ve worked hard to keep our service fee low, charging just enough to help support general, administrative and operational costs for our nonprofit organization. But we’re always looking for ways to make the ticket-buying process friendlier for our loyal audience, along with prospective newcomers.
Last December, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill known as the TICKET Act (H.R. 3950), designed to bring greater transparency to ticket purchasing. The legislation is currently making its way through the U.S. Senate, but The Smith Center decided not to wait. So in September, we switched to an all-inclusive pricing model.
That means that, from the start of the ticketing process, our customers see one and only one price: the actual cost of their ticket – lock, stock and barrel. Since, as a nonprofit, we don’t charge sales tax, the price you see before you place a ticket into your cart is the exact same price you see when you make the purchase.
We feel it provides a better purchasing experience for our customers to know their total cost up front. And though there was likely a bit of a learning curve at first, as longtime regulars saw a slightly higher price at the start – since it now includes our service fee – we’ve been receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback of late, reinforcing our belief that it was the right thing to do.
The arguments against it come mostly from the secondary ticketing folks, who prefer to dangle lower prices up front to draw in consumers, before tacking on charges during the checkout process. And, let’s face it, some of those charges have ballooned wildly in recent years, to the point where it can feel like we’re paying as much in fees as we are for the tickets themselves. The new law will help – and eventually every ticket seller will advertise all-in pricing, great for consumers.
So let’s simplify it across the board, so that every ticket buyer can make one decision in real time, rather than a series of increasingly costly ones. Not only is it fairer, but it leaves customers feeling more excited about their purchases and, therefore, their upcoming events, which is, after all, the point of presenting them in the first place.
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