StubHub Announces New “All-In” Pricing: The Listed Ticket Price You See Is What You’ll Pay

Remember how Ticketmaster promised it was going to be all upfront and transparent about which service fees and charges you’d be paying on tickets, but then sort of dropped the ball? It’s now StubHub’s turn to promise more transparency, with its new “All-in” ticket pricing announcement today. It basically promises that the price you see for a listed ticket is the total price you’ll end up paying at checkout.

For example — if you go to buy a ticket for a concert on Ticketmaster, it’ll show you an initial price (that includes a $10ish service fee in that price) and then tack on a processing fee of $6 at the end. And that’s not including any delivery fee if you choose hard tickets. There’s no charge for electronic tickets or standard mail shipping.

But over on ticket resale site StubHub, if you’re looking for a ticket, the total cost is displayed right from the second search results appear.

From this morning’s email announcement:

On StubHub, you’ll see the final price right when you hit the site. Nothing more will be added to your cost. Not even delivery charges.

Interested in Justin Timberlake tickets that you see listed for $100? Well, $100 is all you’ll pay. On other sites, that same ticket might be listed for $88, but will cost you $104 when it’s all said and done.

It’s worth noting that because each ticket’s delivery options are set by the seller — some only have electronic tickets so you will have to download them, while others are selling hard tickets — you should adjust the “delivery methods” filter when searching for your tickets. It’s not that StubHub isn’t charging for delivery, it’s just including that fee in the listed price of your search results.

While the price listed is the price you’ll pay at the end, if you’re curious about what the included service fee is or how much you are paying for delivery, simply click under Price Details where it says “[see details]” like in the example below.

If you are searching for hard tickets, the price for delivery will default to the cheapest available option; in the example I ran through, it was $5 for UPS Second-Day Air:

And if that $21 service charge is too much for you to bear? Well, that’s your decision to make (And no, I did not go through with that purchase).

Again, if you don’t want to pay $5 for delivery make sure you set your filter ahead of time to only show electronic tickets. That being said, it’s still $2 for either instant download or electronic tickets (electronic tickets might not be available for immediate download and will instead have a “download by” date). There’s no way to change that option when it comes time to complete your purchase.

Check out the full email below, and let’s hope this transparency actually lasts:

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist