I am appalled at the idea that the City Council has decided to allow Ticketmaster and other companies to charge unlimited "convenience" fees for events in Baltimore ("Ticketmaster fees could be unlimited with proposed law," July 3).
I recently attended an event with three others at the Lyric. I purchased tickets from another company because Ticketmaster did not have four seats together. The ones I purchased were at the same price as the ones Ticketmaster was selling. When I got to the checkout, there was an $18 fee added to each ticket plus shipping. The tickets came to $95 each and were upper balcony seats. When the tickets arrived, they were simply sheets of paper with a bar code and a copy of a Ticketmaster seat purchased shortly before my purchase. There was another name with the tickets. It was very surprising to see that the person on the ticket purchased the ticket for $42.75 with a $10 fee from Ticketmaster.
I found this very upsetting that I paid so much more for the same seat. There were a number of people entering the Lyric with the same type of paper. I am sure that the sports teams in Baltimore would not leave because tickets sellers have a cap on how much they can charge. Why not charge one fee per transaction? I hope that Baltimoreans will wake up to what the council is doing and just not buy tickets other than at the venue.
When will the City Council stand up for the citizens they represent?
Pat Kreitzburg, Baltimore