After six years of legal wrangling, someone finally managed to make Ticketmaster accountable for their infamous price-gouging practices. A Canadian lawyer just won a $6 million settlement over the company's notorious "drip pricing" strategy, reports CTV News.
Sure, everyone understands a ticketing company needs to earn a reasonable fee for connecting fans with events. But Ticketmaster has morphed from helpful middleman into the entertainment industry's toll-collecting troll under the bridge, extracting whatever fees they want because, really, where else are you gonna go?
Regina lawyer Tony Merchant led the charge against the ticket-selling behemoth's practice of surprising customers with an endless parade of add-on fees. "It unfairly tricked people into paying more money for really the same thing," Merchant told CTV News. (In late-stage capitalist countries, companies are supposed to be fair about tricking people.)
Ticketmaster did the classic corporate two-step of denying any wrongdoing while simultaneously agreeing to pay millions to make it all go away. The settlement will dish out $45 credits to Canadians who bought tickets during the first half of 2018.
The lawyers are getting $1.7 million, which seems fair considering they spent six years of their lives pursuing this case while Ticketmaster's lawyers probably tried to add processing fees to their legal documents.
Previously:
• We already know Ticketmaster is a rip-off, John Oliver explains just how terrible it is
• Ex-Ticketmaster CEO blames vinyl album lengths on TikTok
• Ticketmaster stung by undercover journalists, who reveal that the company deliberately enables scalpers and rips off artists
• Justice Department sues Livenation over Ticketmaster monopoly abuses
• Proposed redesign of Ticketmaster's ugly and confusing tickets
• Ticketmaster gets $500 million from Mohammad bin Salman