AJ's comment on my post about how greedy promoters want a cut from ticket reselling put me thinking about how ticket sellers rip the cusrtomers off with hidden charges.

Yesterday I booked some tickets on-line for a theme park and when I got to the end of the process I found that I had to pay another £1.50 booking fee just for the privillege of booking the tickets. OK it wasn't as bad as the all the extra fees lumped on to our Alice Cooper tickets, but as I booked on their website and they haven't had to pay box office staff what exactly is this fee aside from another consummer rip off?

It really makes me mad that you can't book tickets for any event now without a booking fee whether its The Rolling Stones or Tutankhamon at the O2 so the price you see advertised is never the one you pay, even though there is no alternative to buying via the agents website or phoneline.

What I'd like to see advertised is the inclusive price you pay including all these top up fees, whether its a booking fee or a credit card charge. Some of them even charge for using a debit card, how the hell else are you going to pay?

And while we are at it I'd like the budget airlines to also clean up their websites so I don't have to keep de-selecting charges for things I don't need.

Call me cynical but I think its all designed to make us think we are getting a great bargain until we look at the final invoice.

The new carpet, as selected by the cat, arrived this morning and the chaps are busy laying it right now. I have already supplied mugs of tea (one and half sugars for me and one for him) and been asked the dreaded question "Do you like football?"

Some corporate whizz kids in the music industry want to stick a levy on reselling gig tickets through websites, with the cash going back to the artists, but naturally via the same agents and managers.

The idea is being soft sold as some kind of attack on ticket touts. Marc Marot who is the Chairman Elect of the Resale Rights Society says its "a grown up solution to acompletely unregulated area" and "There are real issues of consummer protection here. It is unacceptable that not a penny of the £200 million in transactions generated by the resale of concert tickets in the UK is returned to investors in the live music industry"

Look don't take us for a bunch of idiots Mr Marot. This is little more than a ploy to muscle in on a lucretive market. If I buy a car I don't pay a levy to Ford when I sell it on later, so why the hell should I line the pockets of the music industry promoters, agents and managers when I buy a ticket for a gig and then sell it on if I can't go. After all the "investors" already received their cut for putting the gig on when I bought the ticket in the first place. I'd be very surprised if any struggling musicians would ever see a penny from it.

Strikes me its just an example of people seeing an opportunity to line their pockets by doing sod all work for it.