Ticketmaster Rant - Should we have to pay extra for online purchases?

• As a web surfer, I feel cheated when a website asks me to pay an additional fee just because I wanted to buy from them through their website.
• As an online consultant, I always tell my clients to remove as many charges from the site as possible. Remove the shipping charges if possible.

After all, why should a customer have to pay more just because they chose to use the website instead of going to the retailer's brick & mortar store? Don't online purchase save the retailers huge amounts of money? After all, they do not have to have an attractive store, with associates to help the customer - they just need to be online and answer any phone calls.

Many retailers agree with this and offer special website promotions, all in an effort to get you to buy through their website. The most common promotion is free shipping. Unfortunately, not all online retailers agree with this philosophy.

A little while ago I visited the Ticketmaster website to get tickets for my wife and her mother for a show. After selecting the date and the type of tickets, we were shown the prices and fees associated with them. One such fee was a $2.50 per order fee - I am not sure what that was about, but no big deal, I was planning on spending about $200 with them, so what is $2.50 between customer and store? I then noticed another fee of $10.50 per ticket that they labeled as a convenience charge. What the heck is that?!? After some digging around, I found that they said it was a fee that we (the customer, not the website) are charged for having the convenience of buying the tickets from my home on the web instead of waiting in a physical line at the box office.

Well, my office is just a 3 minute walk from the box office. So for the $10.50 per ticket, I will take my convenience and wait in line during my lunch break and never buy a thing from Ticketmaster.