I ordered some tickets for Ashley and I go to see Switchfoot in February, and I was happy to see that the tickets were only $25. I’ve never seen them live, but I dig their music, so it should be a good show. When ordering the tickets, I looked at the price breakdown: the ticket price is $25, but there’s an additional $12.70 in extra charges from Ticketmaster. That’s just over 50% of the ticket price for such dubious things as “convenience charge”, “building facility charge” and “order processing charge”. What a scam. Now I grasp why Pearl Jam went to war with Ticketmaster – they’re truly the mafia of the ticketing industry. I’m all for businesses making a buck, but there’s something very wrong when a ticketing company is charging 50% of the price of the whole damn show we’re going to see. In this era of online orders, PayPal, and other fast and easy methods of transactions, why are bands still using Ticketmaster? Are they really providing that much value? I suspect not.