Author: Shawn K. Quinn

The shell game played by ticketing service providers

Two recent posts I’ve read, this one from Jeff Balke and this one from TicketStumbler (Edit 2021-06-14: archived version), got me curious about the fees that Ticketmaster charges.

Very telling indeed are quotes like these from Jeff:

But, $8.60 PER TICKET for “convenience charges???” What the hell is convenient about that?

and this one from the TicketStumbler article:

But, this isn’t all Ticketmaster’s fault. Ticketmaster has tried switching to a pricing model where all or most of the convenience fees are built in to the face value ticket price. The end price would be the exact same, but the ticket buying experience would be significantly more transparent and mostly spared of backloaded fees. Unfortunately, this sort of pricing structure has been met with opposition from the artists and venues who don’t want to raise prices, or rather don’t want the appearance of raising prices. When the face value cost is lower, it’s much easier for the artists and venues to shift blame towards Ticketmaster for “excessive fees” even if the artists and venues are getting a cut.

I’m not sure where the blame really lies here. It seems like a huge finger-pointing game between Ticketmaster (or Live Nation, etc), the artists, and the venues. Ticketmaster tries transparency, and the artists and venues cry foul because it looks like the prices went up, even though it always cost in the neighborhood of $40-42 to buy what is labeled a $30 ticket.

It’s sad to say, but the only answer here may be truth-in-advertising legislation, to level the playing field for everyone. I can understand why people avoid some concerts; this is a shell game that ticketing agencies should not be allowed to play. I would deem one of two solutions to be more acceptable and fair (and I’m using a generic “Provider” to include Ticketmaster, Live Nation, and similar services for neutrality):

  1. Roll the fees everyone pays no matter what into the ticket’s face value, and allow Provider to show a separate line-item convenience fee specifically for their service. Ideally, this would be labeled “Provider’s convenience fee” (or whoever is doing the ticketing) with a full disclosure to include wording similar to “Provider charges a convenience fee for their service, and this is the only amount Provider keeps. The face value of the ticket goes to the artist and venue.” This fee would include what is today charged as part of the convenience fee and order-processing fee (if the graphic in the TicketStumbler post is taken as truth).

  2. Roll all fees into the ticket’s face value, and offer discounts off of this for multiple ticket orders or venue box office transactions. In this case a full disclosure would read along the lines of “The ticket price includes convenience and processing fees charged by Provider. Ticket prices may be lower through the venue’s box office or other services.”

Either way, fees like the TicketFast fee are outrageous and should be barred by law. This actually saves Ticketmaster and others that offer a similar option money by allowing one to print one’s own tickets at one’s own computer.

(I have heard of the convenience fee being charged even to those buying tickets at the venue, but was unable to locate a specific example. If anyone knows of one, please do comment or send me a message via the contact form.)

“Turn off the caps lock or you’re fired”

Found this article from one of the people I follow on Twitter. The Telegraph ran a story about an office worker fired for using all caps in e-mail.

Vicki Walker, a New Zealand native, was let go from a job at a health care company after complaints from co-workers about “shouty” and confrontational e-mails, including not only the use of all capitals but colors such as red.

She was awarded a judgment of £7,000 (approximately US$10,500 or NZ$17,000) after a court found her dismissal was in fact unfair, due to the fact her firm did not have an e-mail style guide.

I think it’s kind of silly to fire someone over something like this. From the looks of the story, Vicki was not even warned prior to her dismissal. It’s possible, of course, that she was and the story doesn’t mention it.

Even so, in the absence of an e-mail style guide, the company had no business firing her. And her coworkers need to learn how not to be “too easily annoyed” (as said in FidoNet Policy 4).

My 365 Days photography project: reflections and lessons learned

This post is overdue, but I still think it needs to be written.

Starting on 2009-01-02 and ending back about a month ago or so, I did a 365 Days self-portraits photography project. I still have about two months’ worth of pictures that need posting on Flickr, and I still intend to post them. Most of them will not be edited, and a lot of them only qualify as self-portraits because of the presence of a finger or other body part.

My original goal was a perfect 365. That is, one picture every day for 365 consecutive days winding up on 2010-01-01. I believe I gave it the best I had to offer. I try not to think of my 365 Days project as a failure. Some may call it that because I didn’t finish, but I think this is a mistake, because I learned a great deal from what I did.

I know enough about taking self-portraits now that for about 90% of the times I need a picture of myself taken I will have no issues whipping out the old Nikon Coolpix L18 (or its replacement, or whatever DSLR I finally get when–not if–that day comes) and a tripod, and doing the time-honored self-timer routine. Unless of course, I have a remote. Oh, the number of shots that would have been so much easier with a remote…

I learned some days I’m just not as photogenic as I’d like to be. There were days I was pretty sad. In fact, the final two weeks or so of my 365 Days project, there were personal, emotional, mental struggles that pretty much ensured I was crying every day at some point. Most of those pictures will show only a body part. Amazingly I felt good enough about myself in the middle of that to try to take at least one last decent face shot in Hermann Park. At that point my tripod finally gave out, so then body part shots (sometimes as little as a finger) were really all I could do.

I learned life is about the journey, not the destination. I think it is actually better for me personally to learn the lessons I learned from not completing the 365 Days project, than to have tried to complete it. Maybe it’s because I had no idea, by the halfway point, what completing the project would actually symbolize for me.

I learned a day is pretty short, a year is a long time, yet apparently a year or even a decade isn’t long enough for some things.

Am I unhappy about not reaching the goal I set for myself, completing all 365 days? In a way, yes. It’s never good to set a goal and fall short of reaching it. It’s yet another goal I’ve set and not reached during my life. But in a broader sense, this is something I can at least analyze and learn from my mistakes.

There are other situations where I probably will never know enough to know exactly what I screwed up. Just that I did screw up. Once, I can deal with. But twice, or three, four, five times? It really tests my ability to just pick up the pieces and try to move on.

I’d like to offer my thanks to my loyal readers, especially those I know well enough to consider friends, who have stuck around through the best and worst of times. I have no idea who has stuck around since the beginning. Most people start a blog with a circle of friends that read it every day and it kind of grows from there. I just kind of started mine when Twitter’s 140-character limit got burdensome.

I intend to leave the pictures I took online indefinitely. No true artist is ashamed of his art. I believe those who impose shame on others for their art, in whatever form, simply do not understand it. I have seen my share of art that I find revolting, but never once have I criticized an artist’s willingness to make a statement in whatever media he/she felt most appropriate.

I probably will try again. At the very least, I will try a 52 project (one picture per week) if I decide another 365 is not in the cards.

I will probably do a lot more self-reflecting in the future. It’s probably time to shift my focus away from current events a little bit, as even I am finding some of the topics repetitive. At the very least I’m looking at ways to keep it fresh.

I am allowing comments on this post, however due to its nature there may be some I simply cannot approve or that I feel more appropriate not to discuss further in a public forum.

“Library of future” initiative becomes corporate battleground

Wired reports on Sony’s decision to side with Google in a highly contentious lawsuit between Google and rivals Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon.

The lawsuit centers around privacy concerns and the fact it would give Google monopoly-like status on book rights that would be impossible for other companies to acquire without their own lawsuit.

Worse for Google, the Department of Justice is also investigating the settlement–a rather ominous and foreboding development.

I have never been all that positiviely impressed with Sony; they are probably the only company with a hand in consumer electronics and entertainment (the latter through their acquisition of Columbia Tri-Star in 1989 and CBS Records in 1987). The second DVD player my mom ever bought was a Sony, and it was the first to fail; the RCA player purchased a few months before still works today as far as I know. It has always seemed to me that Sony built up a good reputation in its early days, and somehow managed to keep it afloat enough to justify some kind of premium pricing even though the reputation it has is probably less deserved today.

Still, today, I’d really like to give Sony the benefit of the doubt. Yes, even though this is the same Sony known for the doomed Betamax and Digital 8 videotape formats, and the XCP and MediaMax copy protection scandal of 2005.

I don’t know much of the details and motivation behind why Sony would back Google. I do know that it’s Very Bad to let any one company grow to an effective monopoly; there is a reason we have the Sherman Anti-Trust act in the US and why similar legislation and oversight exists in the EU and elsewhere. And this does smell like something Sony would do not out of concern for its customers, but for its own corporate interests. I also believe we, as a society, should not reward a company that puts shareholders above customers when filing amicus briefs in these legal chess games.

Maybe my instinct is off the mark yet again, but it is what it is.

Uncovered CIA abuses from the not-so-distant past

A recent LA Times article and a recent New York Times article detail some rather horrifying abuses by the CIA from a long-secret CIA report released this week.

The specific acts in question include:

  • Brandishing of weapons, including a gun and a power drill, during interrogation sessions;
  • Firing a gun in the room next door to a detainee in an attempt to convince the prisoner another suspect had been executed;
  • Threats against family members of a suspect (two incidents);
  • The use of cigar smoke during interrogations (two incidents, during one smoke was intentionally used to induce vomiting);
  • Forcing a detainee into stressful positions;
  • Bathing a detainee with a stiff brush of the sort used to clean bathrooms;
  • Waterboarding;
  • A “pressure point” technique: restricting a detainee’s carotid artery to the point where he/she would start to pass out, then shaking the detainee to wake him/her; and
  • A mock execution.

I’m glad to see the reports detailing these horrific and inhumane acts declassified and brought to the attention of the public. I do believe sunlight is the best disinfectant, and hopefully the shame brought on by the publicity of these incidents will deter others from similarly inhumane treatment of future prisoners.

I find the stuff brush bath, weapon brandishing, and mock execution to be the most disturbing of the incidents. That’s not to say the rest aren’t disturbing as well, just those incidents in particular are things I would hope decent people would not do. And I still hold out hope that our government is run by decent people.

But I have to ask the question: If these things aren’t torture, what is?