Posting profits

Published Tuesday 13 May 2008 at 12:25

Further to Mark Shenton’s very well researched article (Insight, page 6, May 1) on hidden and/or extra charges involved in the purchase of theatre tickets, one item he didn’t mention is the postage scam.

I made a phone booking for seats for a Liza Minnelli concert and a booking agent quoted me at separate times both £2.50 or £3.00 as the postal charge. The sum was such, I was told, because of the weight of other items of interest to a theatregoer like me that would be included in the envelope. My tickets turned up two days later by second class post in a standard sized envelope, accompanied by two flimsy A5 flyers, which the agents had presumably been paid to distribute.

Miss Minnelli’s three sell-out performances at the Coliseum would mean more than 7,000 seats being sold. I’ll round down figures and assume that each booking was for four seats - that means 1,750 bookings. Let’s take the lower quoted postage figure and just say a £2 profit on postage each booking. That means that, apart from the agency fee charged per ticket, the agent makes at least another £3,500 just on these three performances.

Try multiplying that by the number of performances handled by the agent over a year for the several shows under this company’s representation. You can’t do it. You can bet your boots someone at the agent’s office did before they set the charges.

Peter Ferguson

Enfield Cloisters

Fanshaw Street

London

N1