The Alice Cooper Allegedly

Lets revisit and re-edit our January 2005 Ticket Whinge...

Please Note : There is no mention of the words Platinum, Gold and Bronze in this whinge, apart from just then of course.When does a £32.50 ticket cost the punter £32.50 ? Well hardly ever it seems. It can be as much as £42.10 it seems. Have you been charged higher ? Why can't they just advertise all Alice Cooper Tickets are say £38 and absorb all, yes all their hideous charges into that one price. That wouldn't be too difficult would it ?

But no...

Book in March we might send the tickets out in November though. Paying by Debit or Credit Card ? Great we'll take your money now thank you very much.

Secure Post ?

You have chosen unreserved standing admission tickets. You must select the secure post option. Secure Post ? Surely all post should be secure. But no we are particularly worried that your ticket might not arrive chez vous forcing you to complain on our 0870 number and so we will need to levy our "Secure Post Charge" in this case.

Service Charge £5.65 per ticket ? You are just pulling my chain now. What service are you offering me for that ? Deigning to put up your ticket details on your website ? Bothering to answer the phone ? Running an e-commerce site ? Oh bless you, you are too kind. £5.65 per ticket, PER TICKET !!???

And then there is the Processing Fee ! Processing Fee is £4.95 per transaction Sir regardless of number of tickets you want though. What an absolute chuffing bargain. What the hell is a processing fee ? Not the cost of processing a tree into paper to print my ticket it seems when I asked.

Finders Fee £3.00. You charge me a finders fee for some PC enabled chimp to type "Alice Cooper" in your search engine ? Well I'm sorry but you will have to waive that as I googled you to find your site and will have to charge you my once only Punter's Finders fee of £3.21.

The 0870 fiasco. The ring this premium rate phone line is an old scam. Why is it that when after pressing 1 for Alice Cooper, 2 for Speak to a human, 3 for pay by debit card, 4 for Bournemouth International Centre and 5 for general admission you get through to someone who speaks so sllloooowwwwllly and asks you to make all your selections again ! How can that be ?? Wait I think I might have twigged why they might do that on an 0870 number.

"I'll just put you on hold sir and play some dire muzak while your card clears sir".

Talk to an 0870 Robot.

This seems to be the latest hideous development in the ticket procurement process. Speak clearly after the beep the artist you are interested in "Alice Cooper" I enunciate. Of course the Robot thinks I've said Andy Williams. What a mess. I tried circumventing this system by saying "Brian Snottlebaum" last time to try and get to speak a human instead. You have selected "Alice Cooper" said the Robot. I hung up sharpish.

Then there's the "You have 5 minutes to complete your transaction or we'll cock up your e-transaction and end up billing you twice for an inferior ticket". Guaranteed to bring up my tpoygpaicla erorsr that one.

Turn up in Person, that's gotta work. Err no. You want to pay by Debit / Credit Card Sir "There is a fee for that" Of course there is you realise resignedly. "Unless you pay cash" they whisper. Haha gotcha ! So off to the hole in the wall I run "We close in 10 minutes" they offer helpfully. You hurtle to the cashpoint and feck its out of dosh. What are the chances of that ! You traipse home through the wind and rain determined to try again tomorrow or maybe at the weekend. Its all starting to take its toll...

That said the BIC ticket arrived this morning and despite me saying at the time that I didnt want any details of future events they kindly, at no extra charge, sent me details of the Tweenies, a Frank Sinatra wannabee and Holiday On Ice. Why !!!???????????

Don't even get me started on the TM autoextraction of my hard earned multifariously paradigm (Plastic Variant) ....

Ovination by killer_sheep on Friday, March 16, 2007 on Friday, March 16, 2007 | Permalink