The Cure frontman Robert Smith told fans he was “as sickened as all of you” after hearing about Ticketmaster’s additional charge on ticket sales for the band’s upcoming tour.
Smith criticized the ticket company when fans alerted him to high fees when they tried to score tickets to see the band’s upcoming US tour.
“I’m as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘fee’ debacle,” Smith tweeted Wednesday.
Ticket prices, which started at $20 and ran into the hundreds of dollars, then doubled in price thanks to the company’s fees.
A fan bought 4 tickets priced at $20 each, but paid a final sum of $172 due to a $46 service fee, $40 setup fee, and $5 processing fee.
The rocker noted that while artists can’t “limit” fees, the debacle has left him bubbling.
“To be very clear: the artist has no means of limiting them. I asked how they were justified,” he continued.
“If I get something coherent in response, I’ll let you know.”
Tickets for the band’s tour went on sale Wednesday, with the band announcing that tickets would not be transferable in order to reduce resale and overpricing of third-party services.
Smith told fans he was reassured earlier in the day that Ticketmaster’s verified fan process would help them “fight the scalpers.”
“We had the final say on all of our ticket prices for this upcoming tour, and we didn’t want those prices to be instantly and horribly distorted by resale,” he tweeted to his 213,000 followers on the platform.
Smith’s outrage forced Ticketmaster to agree that the charges had been “unduly high” – forcing them to issue partial refunds.
As a “goodwill gesture,” Smith said the company would refund $10 to anyone who purchased the cheapest tickets.
All others will receive a $5 refund.
“If you have already purchased a ticket, you will get an automatic refund”, Smith tweeted THURSDAY. “Any tickets on sale tomorrow will incur a lower fee.”
It comes as Taylor Swift fans have faced similar issues buying tickets for her upcoming Eras Tour, which is set to kick off on Friday.
The Post confirmed that a group of 25 exasperated Swift fans from across the country sued Ticketmaster for fraud and intentional misrepresentation after the Eras tour debacle in November.
Ticketmaster has canceled last month’s general public sale of Swift Tour tickets after seeing “historically unprecedented” demand at its pre-sale events. Swifties reported website outages and hours of waiting – only to log out empty-handed.
The mega ticket marketplace has apologized – but that’s not enough for those diehard Swifties, who claim Ticketmaster ‘deliberately misled’ pre-sale ticket buyers when it ‘couldn’t satisfy ticket request”.
The tour is scheduled to kick off in Arizona on Friday and wrap up in Los Angeles in August.