I don't know what others think but if you're charging sums like nearly four hundred quid a go for tickets to an event isn't it some brass neck to throw a fiver for a booking fee on top of all that?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62l9yw3kpqo

I recently bought tickets to a show next June, Tony Blackburn's Sounds Of The 60's tour, as a present for someone this Christmas. I booked online, paid the tickets, the booking fee and because it's so far ahead and not for me I also did the extra charge for having them fully refundable just incase. That was more than £7 itself, another rip off. Added to the booking fees it was about £14 before you got to the actual ticket itself. Fleeced! I wasn't even able to get a proper ticket sent, I had to print it or have it on a device. No good for a gift.

So I've paid the booking fee despite booking myself on my own laptop, with my own electric, using my own time, and then going to my own printer, again with my own electric, my own ink and my own paper to run the tickets off, and I've been charged for doing all this with my own stuff.

Why is nobody investigating and dealing with these unacceptable profiteering and sham surcharges?

For the Glasto these days, I would a tent, my own washing facilities and my private John.

I booked for a show yesterday for next year, I was not told about the £1 booking fee, I know it's a £1 but I would like to be told, considering I bought a coffee and a nice piece of cake before booking.

I did buy group tickets a couple of years ago. I was charged £2 fee for each bloody ticket. Taking into account I spent over well over £200.

what annoys me these days if that some theatre's don't let you cancel or buy your ticket back.

I did book for Average White Band earlier in the year, I had a family member taken ill. So we couldn't go. I was not expecting a full refund even a small refund would have been nice.

Some of the smaller theatres which are run by charities do offer you protection for cases like that; so why can't the big ones do that?

If you are printing E-tickets you should be exempt from the booking fee, all the person has done is send you an email, not like the old days when they tickets via post.

I was thinking of booking something for next year. Before I got the checkout, I was asked if I wanted to donate money £5 was the default amount.

I know the theatre is moving to the same town in 2 years or so, so what would my donation go towards? The theatre is owned by the council for FFS and managed by volunteers. If I go in person I would probably get a nice slab piece of cake or coffee before booking up. However, I still have to pay a few pounds for the booking fee.

I have heard the venues want a percentage of what has been sold at the merchandise stand. I was told the merchandise stand is crucial for local or tribute bands.

Why didn't you book Focus for yourself Rich?

I'd forgotten to Focus about Focus! Thanks for the reminder.

At my local theatre, Milton Keynes Theatre, you don't have to pay the booking fee if you turn up in person at the box office, but you do if you are at home doing all the effort yourself. Work that out. Trouble is the box office is now only open during a show time where once it was open much of the day. That's useless to many people who are not around after 7pm and wish to do things in the day in an area such as this.

This is the theatre, and I was at it on the night, where during a Cinderella panto in December 2009 Amy Winehouse got thrown out for disrupting the place and made news.

But on the booking fees, why do you have to have a separate fee per ticket when basically you are making one booking transaction, irrespective of the amount of tickets. I got caught out with my recent show tickets on the cheeky refund guarantee fee they offered up. I thought it was a set fee to cover the whole transaction, but nope, it came through on each ticket. Anyway, how come they can offer me a refund if I cough up nearly £4 each ticket but if I don't do so it's not possible? Not forgetting if you do get your refund you don't get your booking fee or refund fee back so that's an unrecoverable loss and tidy sum for them to keep.

As for the exorbitant cost of the merchandise in the foyer, they can go to hell!

You have a point about refunds on booking fees. I don't mind losing a couple of quid on the booking fee. I would be pissed though it was £5 or more, that is enough for a drink at the bar.

The theatre near me even sometimes adds booking fees in person, but it's down to who is serving you. When I got my ticket yesterday, another lady took a booking call for a party to see the panto. I overheard some of it at the counter, so it couldn't be helped. The person on the phone spent hundreds of pounds, and the booking agent mentioned the fees. She emailed the tickets over, but the lady serving me didn't charge me.

Going to the merchandise stand is a rip-off, getting a shirt, posters, and keychain used to be a nice souvenir. I might just get a pen or a mug. I have seen shirts from anything between £20-£45 or Hoodies at £50-£80 and tour jackets at £200. I have seen people go mad getting merchandise as they are still high from an adrenaline rush.

Bands can get a bit huffy when they see fans in bootleg shirts, which gets on my nerves. Lower your prices, the fan has already paid to see the band and bought their music over the years. Compare your bank balance to the band you are seeing or the thousands they have spent on Botox.

I do see a lot of concert T-shirts from a few ago in charity shops.

When I saw Justin Hayward I did get a baseball cap and a nice CD for £5 each, I was shocked at the prices.

You have to go this Rich.

stables.org/event/jan-akkerman#event-handling-fee-text


All ticket prices on this website are published inclusive of booking fees. For tickets up to and including £10, a fee of £1 per ticket will be charged. For tickets between £10.01 and £15, a fee of £1.50 per ticket will be charged. For tickets between £15.01 and £25, a fee of £2.50 per ticket will be charged. For tickets between £25.01 and £35, a fee of £3.50 per ticket will be charged. For tickets over £35, a fee of £4.50 per ticket will be charged. Should an event be cancelled, or rescheduled to a new date that you cannot attend, The Stables will refund the ticket price portion only of the amount originally paid. Booking fees are non-refundable - for full Ts&Cs visit stables.org

Are you going to that in February GM?

How far are you prepared to travel to see something that really appeals to you?

On the baseball caps thing, I got one 7 years ago after a family member went to Greenwich to see a Cliff outdoors show that summer. A very nice navy baseball cap, and I've always been a fan of Cliff's 1976-90 stuff, however I just could not bring myself to wear the baseball cap out and about with Cliff's name on the front, so used it in the garden only!

One person I wish I had seen was David Bowie and never did. This is excruciating because back in 1983 he did three consecutive nights at the Milton Keynes Bowl from 1st to 3rd July on hot summer nights, on his Serious Moonlight Tour, while his big classic selling album and single Let's Dance were out, and I'd just bought the big follow up in the chart that week, China Girl one of my fave's of his. He really was at the total peak of his powers that summer and here he was performing just 3 miles from home but at 14 I was rather too young to go. With the wind in the right direction you could hear the sound from some of these gigs and at the end see the fireworks or laser effects going off. Queen had also done a one off show there a year previous on a scorching hot 5th June 1982, but again, too young. Later in 1982 in October a science teacher of mine had gone to see Genesis at the MK Bowl and the whole thing was a major heavy rain washout she'd said and Phil and the group are online somewhere speaking about that one.

My first music event was Showaddywaddy three weeks before I hit the age of 12. Not at the Bowl. An impulse ticket purchase on the same day by my parents, but my younger brother refused to go because there was an England match on that night in late May 1981 so the ticket was given to a girl I was in school with instead. Showaddywaddy at that exact moment were just about washed up as a charting force. A few years later doing a further education course in my early 20's a discussion about first gigs got going and when I said mine there were fits of laughter. I was deemed good enough for Showaddywaddy at 12 but not for Queen at 13 or Bowie at 14. Life can be a bitch sometimes.

I don't really travel these days Rich for concerts, I did in my younger days a great deal. I saw Ted Nugent live 50 times across America. My uncle was a huge fan, he was my hero. He found me a job in NYC in my mid-teens in the 1980s from Ireland.

I moved to England in the early 1990s, then to Ireland, then to England. I guess home is where the heart is.

I see shows around the Westcountry and Southwest, but I find driving to and throwing to and from venues tiresome, expensive and boring. If I go by train I need to book a hotel, I don't live near good train links. My partner is treating me to a concert up North next year and I have no idea who it is.

There has not been much of a music scene here since Covid, we lost the main theatres, and the little theatre only caters for tribute acts or folk music. I don't mind tribute acts these days if they are decent, it's rock cover bands that I don't like they are just pub bands who got lucky.

If I were near MK, I would make most of the local venue for prog and classic rock Rich.

I did prefer Matchbox and Darts to Showaddywaddy. They are now a tribute band Romeo Challenge is pretty much in the background and they are robbing people IMHO.

You are a brave man even going outside with a Cliff Richard ballcap.

How can you live in MK Rich and not order Stray tickets for £16 it's tomorrow night.

I think Glastonbury has become an unthininking £400 rite of passage; like losing your virginity, or getting a driving licence.

I think you are right Wyot.

I bet people who go to Glasto want something to prove on their socials and maybe get a chance to be on the TV.

It's probably just me if I had paid £374, I wouldn't want to spend extra on food and drink.

Not forgetting people do get into heated arguments with some white middle-class hippy about which tent belongs to who.

Thanks for your responses Green Man. I was actually in class with someone whose uncle was a member of Matchbox at the time they were having their couple of big hits.

Glastonbury, which I've never been to and neither would I wish to go to it, even for free, unless perhaps Bowie and Freddie Mercury were somehow resurrected, is a monumentally hypocrital enterprise far removed from its original roots.

These people ruin the environment, litter and filth all left behind, they can't even take their tents back home with them in most cases nowadays, utterly throwaway attitude, and yet I bet most of these people are the Just Stop Oil sympathisers and Green party brigade who rave over all those environment issues and climate change. It's clearly a woke event, but with one gigantic anti-diverse failing....

Why do almost zero black or ethnic people buy tickets and go to Glastonbury, other than some of the stage acts? It is one of the least diverse events you could name in modern Britain. The KKK would be proud. A bit inconvenient that, especially when shown on the quota obsessed gender and race fixated discrimanatory BBC who seem in thrall of this weekend event for some strange reason and have now turned it into an annual jolly for hundreds of their own staff.

Glastonbury at nearly £400 for the weekend actually manages to make the BBC licence fee seem a bargain.

Green Man wrote:
How can you live in MK Rich and not order Stray tickets for £16 it's tomorrow night.





I have sent the link for you Rich to see Stray.

stables.org/event/stray

Rich wrote:
Thanks for your responses Green Man. I was actually in class with someone whose uncle was a member of Matchbox at the time they were having their couple of big hits.

Glastonbury, which I've never been to and neither would I wish to go to it, even for free, unless perhaps Bowie and Freddie Mercury were somehow resurrected, is a monumentally hypocrital enterprise far removed from its original roots.

These people ruin the environment, litter and filth all left behind, they can't even take their tents back home with them in most cases nowadays, utterly throwaway attitude, and yet I bet most of these people are the Just Stop Oil sympathisers and Green party brigade who rave over all those environment issues and climate change. It's clearly a woke event, but with one gigantic anti-diverse failing....

Why do almost zero black or ethnic people buy tickets and go to Glastonbury, other than some of the stage acts? It is one of the least diverse events you could name in modern Britain. The KKK would be proud. A bit inconvenient that, especially when shown on the quota obsessed gender and race fixated discrimanatory BBC who seem in thrall of this weekend event for some strange reason and have now turned it into an annual jolly for hundreds of their own staff.

Glastonbury at nearly £400 for the weekend actually manages to make the BBC licence fee seem a bargain.

I have never been to festivals, I do love the outdoors but I could never share a bog with thousands of people especially if someone has explosive guts or women blocking the crapper with their hygiene products. I did watch bits of Download on Youtube I wouldn't call it diverse like Glasto but the age groups are much wider.

It does make me laugh about Glasto, it's a very left-wing event yet they have more fences and security than Dover. It annoys me to see festival goers and events who abandon their pop-up tents, if you don't want them take them home and put them up on Freecycle or Marketplaces as free.

If you see Just Stop Oil or Green Party people, take note that they are always white, posh, middle-class and were doctors or teachers. If they are students they are from wealthy families and probably feel a bit of a rebellion when they are in numbers or the lad wants to try his chances of getting laid for the first time.

If doctors cared they wouldn't strike or hold the public hostage over vital health care. I doubt they run their gas guzzlers on vegetable oil.

I wouldn't say teachers live in the real world. I also wonder if festival-goers pushed for the ban on plastic straws but they dispose of their plastic shit in a field after the event? They think children belong to them...I think you know they belong to the parents or guardians.

They went to school, finished school, then went to college and went back to school. Then they seduce and diddle with your kids or if they don't do it, they sure want to though.


Now you better get ready Rich for tonight's Stray concert.

Agree with everything you said on Glastonbury and those who attend. It's so true about almost all of the modern day eco protestors and Green Party members. They are all white, from a very narrow similar background, which is a well brought up one, quite nicely off, never personally wanted for too much, have a cushy life and little for themselves personally to complain about but feel the need to look around and find something to latch onto and complain bitterly over to justify their existance somehow because their own lives are just so smooth going. But then a minority of them are not as intelligent as they think they are and end up in prison for childish acts they think make a difference but don't.


Now onto that band called Stray.

I first saw your post last night with the link at 7pm, an hour before the gig. It won't surprise you to learn therefore I missed the boat there on that one.

I have never ever heard of this band, yet I discovered they'd been going on and off since the mid 60's and are British. Where have they been hiding? When you first mentioned them to me I thought you were referring to the Stray Cats actually. Even when I looked at the Stables link to their gig on Sundayy evening I thought it was an incarnation of the Stray Cats that had peeled off from the originals and could only use a variant of the name for some legal issue and had dropped the Cats bit! Until I checked them out further. Anyway it's always interesting to find out something new, even if they are, er....old!

I am interested to know what your taste in music is Rich. It's a pity you missed Stray though.

I have looked at gigs near where you are out of interest, you do have an eclectic mix of bands that perform in MK.

Going to see live a band is cheaper than a few pints in a pub these days.

If you want to see a fun band I do highly recommend China Crisis and if you want something different see John Verity (Argent/Zombies). You should go to the 2 Focus concerts Rich.

I always found Fairport Convention hit-and-miss live. However, they are legendary. Dave Pegg seems to have mellowed down since he stopped drinking, he could be a very mouthy, violent and rude git. I have a few stories.

stables.org/event/fairport-convention-1

If you are into commercial blues music then Gary Fletcher Band is a must-see.

stables.org/boxoffice/ticket/359601

stables.org/event/john-verity-band