This present wasn’t the ticket

Re “Writing Your Own Ticket” (Feb. 3): Buying entertainment tickets is a good example of how politics works in this country these days and how consumers are all too often worse off for it. Imagine any other business being allowed to advertise a product at its wholesale price, and only at the end of the transaction reveal substantial additional markups and added fees.

Recently, my wife and I received a gift certificate from Ticketmaster as a wedding present. You cannot redeem the certificates on the Internet or by phone; you must go to retail premises to do so. But when I went to the Northridge Tower Records, a kid with facial staples told me their machine was busted. Then, at Robinsons-May, the sweet lady at their Ticketmaster reacted to my gift certificate as if I had presented her with a stone from Venus. It literally took 45 minutes before I could walk out of there with two tickets.

But why should Ticketmaster bother with employee training, or modernizing their procedures? They don’t have to -- they’re a monopoly!

Les Brockmann

Reseda

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Thank you for your excellent and timely article regarding online ticketing benefits and trends. Many readers will be affected by even more changes in 2005. Employees of companies offering perks of discounted entertainment tickets can now buy and print them online 24/7 without burdening their overworked and understaffed human resources departments. Entertainment venues such as amusement parks are eager to integrate this eConsignment technology to further reduce their ticketing costs and receive their revenue faster: a true win-win scenario.

David Matty

San Juan Capistrano