This is round 3 in our Worst Company In America contest, Ticketmaster vs. Wachovia. Their crimes?
Ticketmaster’s inability to fix their system allows scalpers to buy up all the tickets for a concert within minutes, depriving fans of their chance to get a ticket for a fair price. On top of that, Ticketmaster routinely obtains sole vendor relationships with venues, so that even the initial ticket prices are inflated.
For their part, Wachovia profited in millions by allowing scammers to use stolen identities to drain money from customers’ accounts with unsigned checks, despite receiving thousands of warnings about the fraud.
Choose the greater of two evils.
This is a post in our Worst Company In America 2008 series. Keep track of all the goings on at consumerist.com/tag/worst-company-in-america/
STILL OPEN FOR VOTING: Facebook vs The American Arbitration Association, Comcast vs Menu Foods
More From Consumerist
-
Here Are Your Contestants For The 2013 Worst Company In America Tournament!
-
These 8 Remaining Worst Company In America Contenders Sure Are Elite
-
Worst Company In America Round 2: Sallie Mae Vs. Ticketmaster
-
Meet The Final 4 Contenders For Worst Company In America 2013
-
Worst Company In America Round 1: Ticketmaster Vs. Equifax
Come on, the inability to get Hannah Montana tickets is worse than a bank that doesn’t protect your financial interests? lol
Stolen identity thieves? Sounds bad!
Seriously, I had to vote for Ticketmaster as I have had nothing but great service from Wachivia.
Ticketmaster has people over a barrel, and can charge whatever they want. I bought 2 tickets for Rush and they tacked on a $9.45 Convenience Charge and a $6.00 Building Facility fee per ticket. Then their recommended delivery, email, costs an extra $2.50. And the convenience charge scales with the price of a ticket. So, my $82 for 2 tickets went to 118 with fees.
*Wachovia
Ouuu…it looks like we may have our first upset of the opening rounds!
Ticketmaster is basically a monopoly, so they are defiantly the most evil. I have hated them for years.
Wachovia is just incompetent more than outright evil.
Ticketmaster. Too many “fees” added to tickets. They even charge for you to print your own at home.
Which is why I don’t go to concerts.
@FilthyHarry: I’m gonna vote for a company that’s directly affected me and that operates in my area over one that doesn’t.
@Buran: I think that is how many people will vote.
@Buran: Granted if you want to vote based on personal experience sure, that makes sense (though I don’t know who you voted for) But I don’t used either service so I just went with the one that sounds a worse and as I said, a bank that lets scammers rip you off sounds a lot worse than a ticketing agent that overcharges you. IMO
Nobody is over a barrel with ticketmaster. You don’t HAVE to go to a concert.
Wachovia on the other hand, knowingly profitted from scammers who were looting people’s bank accounts. Ticketmaster = bad, Wachovia = EVIL.
Ticketbastard FTW!
I voted for them b/c in a number of instances you don’t have a choice if you want to see a particular band/show. I can avoid Wachovia the rest of my life, but if I want to see certain acts, they’re the devil I have to deal with.
@mbouchard: Which is why Ticketmaster will definitely win this one.
I can understand the logic — people are more likely to vote for a company that they have directly interacted with, so banks and the like (aside from perhaps the public punching bag that is BoA) may get smaller vote counts than they otherwise would if everybody were subjected to their crap.
Wachovia is pretty bad, but ticketmaster definitely affects me more because I don’t go anywhere near Wachovia.
The $10 conveinence charged tacked on tickets isn’t very convenient. It’s ridiculous that a ticket marked for $35 ends up costing $55. And to buy a floor ticket to any half-decent band you have to be online at the time when they go on sale or they sell out in 5 minutes because of scalpers.
I voted TicketMaster.
Only company I know of thats legally allowed to charge $24 for tickets they advertise as $15.
i hate them, so very very much.
@Cisslepants:
Exactly. I can choose where I bank, I can’t choose where I buy concert tickets. Therein lies the problem.
It especially irks me that even if I go to the venue’s box office I have to deal with Ticketmaster and their bullshit fees. Granted, fees are less if you go this route, but it should be nothing.
@starrion: I understand your point. We don’t have to have a lot of things in this world, credit cards, phones, TV’s, Cable, gas service, etc. to SURVIVE. But I tend to think about in terms of what a regular person usually has and does. One of those things is ocassionaly attending a concert of some sort. In addition, whole point of capitalism is that there should be meaningful choice/ competition. My view is if there is not or if industries collude to make identical rules, there should be appropriate regulation to make things “fair.”
I voted for ticketmaster because of their monopoly status, their unfair business practices of “allowing” scalpers to buy all the ticket, and the fact that I just spent $15 in convenience fees for a $20 Flogging Molly show.
Perhaps I’d be more sympathetic if they made full disclosure that, “our system is not fair, we allow scalpers to buy all the tickets, we charge whatever we want, and we force exclusivity agreements on venues.” then I mighthave a different opinion.
No clue how the hell ticketmaster is winning this one…i can only assume ticket prices are more important to the readers than the protection of their money and identity….with which without you would not be able to buy your tickets with….can there be another version of the bracket…something like “worst company contest for 8th graders”?
@milty45654:
or you could be completely off the mark, missing a major theme this site and the users here have made very clear.
You get what you deserve, and have no right to bitch, when you use a bank.
@ARP:
Again, our entertainment needs trump our need to be decent caring humans.
Are you serious? Why is ticketmaster winning?
I work down the street from IAC otherwise known as Ticketmaster. I always curse their name as I walk by their stainless stell facade on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood on my way to the office. I kid, it’s great they are in my neighborhood we can use all that extra tax revenue they generate on those inflated ticket prices.
Seriously though, Ticketmaster is only one of the factors that makes it a pain in the ass to go to a show. You can blame the big talent agencies (ICM, William Morris, CAA etc) working toghether with the promoters like Clearchannel & Live Nation signing exclusive deals with artists to lock up revenues in one nice package which jacks up prices due to the lack of competition.
@milty45654: I don’t think its simply our infantile thought process at work.
With banks, we do have some choice. Granted, the choices suck, but we have it. So we could switch to a more secure bank/credit union if there was a problem. With TM, we have no choice. That’s the source of frustration with so many here.
I actually had an almost-positive exeprience with Ticketmaster. I bought some tickets to a show and at the same time, I bought a parking pass to the venue. Normally when I buy tickets online, I take the option to pick up the tickets at the will-call office. But, the parking pass could not be left for pickup. I would need to have it in hand before I got to the gate, so it had to be physically delivered. Ticketmaster’s web site offers several delivery options, and I made the mistake of electing the cheapest: have the tickets and pass delivered free by regular mail.
The tickets are supposed to arrive no later than 48 hours before the show; they didn’t. The confirmation email I received when I bought the tickets stated they would send me a notice email when the tickets were ready to be mailed out; I received no such notice. 30 hours before the show and I was still ticketless.
I called the Ticketmaster contact number given on their web site, and according to my cell phone it took 31 minutes and 48 seconds to complete my business with them. The vast majority of that time was spent on hold, wondering if my battery would last. Once I finally got to speak with someone they handled my problem quickly and well. I got a voucher to have my tickets reprinted at the venue box office, and invalidated the original tickets so if they had been stolen, the thief couldn’t use them. The parking pass could not be reprinted, so I got a full refund of the amount for that. But of course without it I did still have a parking problem.
This poll reminds me of Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil on Comedy Central. Personally, I think Ticketmaster is winning, because most of us have learned to steer away from Wachovia (Wachovia doesn’t even serve my area), while Ticketmaster has a near monopoly.
BTW it is not a matter of “avoiding” Wachovia. They process fraud transactions that take money from your bank account whether you bank with them or your friendly neighborhood credit union.
If your CU then corrects it, and tells Wachovia “Hey, that’s fraud!”, Wachovia ignores them, bills the fraudster for the chargeback, AND STILL PROCESSES THE NEXT TRANSACTION!!!onez.
You cannot avoid them which is why Wachovia, Comcast, AAA, and Halliburton should be contending for the finals.
@milty45654: Well, to be fair, I think part of the argument is, which is worse, a de-facto monopoly that egregiously, maliciously abuses their position or an innately evil company whose business model – until caught – was based on raping its customers while profiting off the crooks. But a company with lots of competition.
Inescapably evil vs Avoidably, yet more innately evil.
It’s a toughie, for sure. I’m still mulling it over…
@ARP:
You also have the choice to NOT go to a show…boycott them all and force ticketmaster to comply….if they can’t sell ANY tickets, they will have to change their ways…but people don’t unite anymore in this country and take a stand; instead just paying the fees and letting them continue to rip you off..
Why did I vote for Ticketmaster? I look out of my office window here on the Sunset Strip and I see seven different banks (Wells Fargo is downstairs, BofA and Citibank is across the street, City National is down a block and etc) and only one corporate headquarters of ticketmaster. I hate the lack of competition Ticketmaster enjoys unlike local banks.
I never saw the problem with scalpers. It’s no different than buying a Nintendo Wii and selling it for more later. Obviously there wouldn’t be a market for scalped tickets unless people were willing to pay.
Don’t like Wachovia? Bank somewhere else. Don’t like Ticketmaster? Can’t go to the show. Lack of market choices here makes this round quite easy.
Someone explain to me how Ticketmaster is winning this… time to redo my chart…
I think Ticketmaster is winning simply because more people have been pissed at them for longer. I know I hate their guts.
@starrion: you don’t HAVE to use wachovia either. People WANT to go to concerts, either music or comedy or some other and then they HAVE to use ticketmaster.
I had to vote for Ticketmaster. I have a ton of different options for banks but if I want to go to a concert, I have to deal with getting the shaft from Ticketmaster.
Is there going to be a continuously updated graphic of the playoff bracket somewhere?
wow buying tickets to a Britney Spears concert is more important than stopping fraud?
what’s wrong with you people?
What in the heck is that graphic? With the red outline? Is it 2 knights fighting? Seriously, somebody help me…
@alphafemale: That’s what it looks like to me.
@Papa Midnight: The monopoly factor makes it so that people are basically forced to do business with Ticketmaster if they want to see a particular show (or pay even more from a reseller). That makes people more resentful because they feel they don’t have a choice but to pay the egregious fees. Ticketmaster is also notorious for scammy practices like charging MORE money for Internet ticket delivery despite the fact that this probably costs them LESS money than having people talk to a customer service agent or use the mail. They’re a company that rips you off just because they can.
If you’re a Wachovia customer, that’s pretty much entirely your choice. There is zero reason you can’t switch to another bank.
Also, the thing to note with Ticketmaster v. Wachovia is that only a very small percentage of Wachovia’s business is skeevy (really). Pretty much every Ticketmaster transaction is full of scammy fees.
I went with Wachovia, for:
A) The sheer amount of money involved compared to Ticketmaster, and
B) I’m convinced that even if Ticketmaster went away tomorrow, someone else would jump into its place and do the same thing, so I don’t see Ticketmaster as being in an exclusive group.
Is it wrong that I actually like Wachovia? I’ve been with them for 10 years…never had a problem. Every other bank I’ve used (living overseas and second account) have had major problems. As far as big banks go, they’re pretty good. Granted, I’ve never had to deal with any fraud or anything like that…
…and here comes the bitching!
TICKET MASTER IS SINGLE HANDEDLY RUINING THE CONCERT INDUSTRY…where most musicians make their money. 10 thumbs down.
This one surprised me: I voted for Wachovia, fully expecting to be in the majority, and it turns out I’m not. And I have to wonder why.
The problems with Ticketmaster are problems with a luxury service. You don’t lose the ability to eat or make a mortgage payment because you couldn’t get a ticket to the Britney Spears show. In the grand scheme of things these problems amount to little more than a person’s ability to wisely spend their excess income.
Wachovia’s problems are far more dangerous. If people are defrauded of their money due to Wachovia’s problems, then they may lose their house or their car or may not be able to feed themselves or their children until the issue has been resolved. Think about that: You can’t buy a concert ticket, or you can’t make the mortgage payment on your house. Yet, Ticketmaster is worse?
It blows my mind that people think that Ticketmaster is the greater evil. Wachovia is easily the heavier gorilla here.
When Wachovia bought out SouthTrust several years ago, my mom and all of her fellow employees lost their jobs. Several thousand jobs were lost in the Birmingham area alone. So I can’t help but vote for them…out of pure, personal spite.
To the people asking how Ticketmaster is winning;
Do you have any concept of the power of choice?
Drive down any street in any neighborhood and you’ll see a dozen different banks.
But try to buy tickets to ANY show, and you have ONE option, ticketmaster – who in turn basically rape their customers with monopolistic fees. Charge you to receive tickets via e-mail? Charge you to print them out yourself? Hell, even Comcast has competitors.
There’s only one choice here, and it’s ticketmaster.
@starrion:
“Nobody is over a barrel with ticketmaster. You don’t HAVE to go to a concert.”
Oh, shut up. You don’t HAVE to put your money in a bank either, you can put it under your mattress. If you want to offer a counter argument, try to come up with something more realistic than “you don’t have to” do anything fun.
@aeebee: I actually like Bank of America, based on over 10 years of experience with them. Like your view of Wachovia, I know that mine is an unpopular view here.
I think the general problem with these polls is that it’s poorly defined what we’re voting on. Are we voting on worst overall, worst customer service, worst single horror story, etc? So people always argue over the same general principles on every one of these matchups.
From the comments, it appears that a lot of people just didn’t read the Wachovia story.