SPENDING WISELY
BEST VALUES IN CARS, TECH, TRAVEL & ENTERTAINMENT
PRINT
EMAIL
DEL.ICIO.US
DIGG THIS
Earlier this year, Darryl-Ann Harries of Chicago bought tickets from TicketsNow for herself and five friends to attend a James Blunt concert. She paid $65 each for tickets with a $28 face value. "I'd rather pay extra and get exactly the seats I want than go to Ticketmaster, where the best seats never seem to be available," says Harries.
TicketsNow recently began to offer ticket insurance, which guarantees a refund of your ticket price and shipping fee if you can't attend for covered personal, medical or travel-related reasons. The policy typically costs 5% of your ticket price and shipping fee. Expect other ticket sellers and resellers to begin selling similar policies soon.
Some ticket brokerages sell packages that include transportation arrangements, restaurant reservations and other spiffs. For the concierge-like service, you pay a premium of 10% to 20% above the price that scalpers charge for comparable tickets.
Case in point: Last December, Steve Willett of Johnstown, N.Y., bought seven tickets apiece for Wicked, The Lion King and the Radio City Christmas Spectacular on a month's notice from ticket broker Golden Platter Sports. Although Wicked was sold out, Golden Platter provided him with tickets in the third row for $225 each (face value: $125). Golden Platter also booked a car service to transport Willett and his family between their hotel and the shows, and reserved tables at restaurants.
You'll find ticket brokerages in local phone listings. These white-glove scalpers work primarily with corporate clients seeking group tickets for sports events and pre- and post-event parties, so you should call to ask if they serve individuals. Also ask if they offer money-back guarantees that cover ticket delivery and validity.
Shop the markets
Of course, eBay is a prime source of resold tickets, and it has a new wrinkle. EBay Express, which debuted this spring, offers tickets and other items at fixed prices. It doesn't charge buyers a fee and, unlike eBay auctions, it includes only sellers who have been well rated by more than 100 previous customers. Its fixed-price sales are also faster than eBay's auctions, which can take days to close.
If you like the idea of auctions, you will be pleased to hear that some official ticket sellers have gotten into the game. Many musical acts -- including Madonna this spring -- will fob off tickets to events through auctions, usually run by Ticketmaster. In most auctions, the highest bidders receive seats closest to the stage, while the lowest winning bidders get seats that are farther away.
Web marketplaces, including eBay Express and eBay auctions, share a drawback: Some crooks use these sites to unload fake tickets. One scam is to sell multiple photocopies of a bar-coded electronic ticket, which means that the first person to have the ticket scanned by a gate agent will be admitted, while holders of tickets with identical bar codes won't. Neither eBay Express nor eBay will reimburse you if your ticket purchase goes awry.
Enter StubHub.com, a marketplace that promises to refund the price of any ticket that fails to reach you by FedEx or admit you to the seat promised. As added protection, StubHub sends staff to major music and sports events to replace dud tickets with comparable or better tickets on the spot, when possible. For its service, StubHub charges 10% of your ticket price, plus shipping. Of course, the fees are added on top of any existing scalper markups over your ticket's face value.
Sports fans should consider sites where season-ticket-holding fans unload tickets to individual games. The top fan resale site is Ticketmaster's Sports TicketExchange, which resells season tickets for 37 professional teams in several sports. Ticket prices are often lower than the comparable box-office price. And Ticketmaster guarantees that tickets are authentic, charging fees that vary by team and recently ranged from $2 to $30.
StubHub also resells tickets for professional teams in many sports. The fee is 10% of the ticket price. If StubHub accidentally resells a fake ticket, it will refund your money.
Reprint Article
|
|
|
|
|
