Major league gouging

It’s the Cherry Blossom Festival in DC this weekend and I’m heading over there with a group of eager tourists.

I have some free time Friday night so I thought I’d head over to check out the Washington Nationals new baseball park & watch them play the Atlanta Braves.

My plan was to go on-line and purchase a ticket but I was blown away by the Internet add on prices. I was willing to purchase an upper deck ticket @ $18.00 but after all the extra fees my total price was $27.25. Tacked on was a $4.00 convenience fee, a $3.50 order fee plus for the privilege of printing the ticket at home (the recommended option) the fee was an additional $1.75.

According to my handy dandy pocket calculator that’s over a 50% mark up!

Guess I’m going to catch the METRO-$1.65 each way-to the park and buy my ticket the old fashioned way. Yes that’s in person standing in line at the box office ticket window.

My other gripe is that if I was paying these fees to support a human employee-the ticket office reservationists-then I might not mind as much. But to have a software program handle the transaction just doesn’t sit well with me.

I imagine that I’m just too old school.