The9

I shall be being pictured looking sad with my Season Ticket before you know it.

I always did.

I'll be stopping going... once I've been to Man City and Arsenal. I also haven't paid a car parking fee since it came in, and didn't pay a booking fee for the entire of the past 2 seasons by a combination of going to the TO and just not going to certain matches, but they've now eradicated every possible avenue of doing that except turning up on the day and paying in cash - which presumably is how they keep this side of "legal". I don't expect the club to change it, that doesn't remove my right to complain that it is misleading and unclear and should be fixed, but hopefully the government has that one in hand.

I'm not sure what your problem is here, other than the semantics of surcharge/booking fee, which I haven't even commented on. Other than that I completely agree with you regarding lack of transparency.

The law making it illegal for ticketing organisations to charge more than the advertised price. If they want to charge me £50.50 for a Man City ticket, fine, just don't tell me it's £49.00. Same with the Wigan/Man UT tickets, where Saints haven't even said there's a fee applicable.

That's a fair point, nowhere in that article does it mention any additional ticket costs other than "(call charges apply)" after the phone number.

Or choose the third option, moan about it to the right people to get it changed to something better.

The point I'm making is that the only thing you managed to find (I assume on the ST page) referenced a different amount, for different types of tickets, bought in different proximity to the event. So there's no reason to think that's applicable to the purchases from today. Michelle's OP implies that the £1.50 per ticket was unexpected to her, and given that there are 7 of us buying in that group and I'm pretty well informed on this kind of stuff (see the other City thread for clarifications re: loyalty points), I'd say that if none of us were expecting it, then it was pretty well hidden.

And that only applies to Match Days, and therefore home tickets, which this clearly isn't.

Before choosing to complete, but not necessarily before choosing to buy before you leave the house, if you're not aware of the taxes (which as I've said previously are not well publicised and vary depending on a number of criteria). And it's hardly like there are any other ticket vendors out there offering competitive services to make them reconsider. Your options at the ticket window are more or less "pay it" or "don't go".

Someone posted on here to say they changed it last season.

Judging by the "clarification" post on the OS, they are planning on allocating loyalty points to every customer number so hopefully they will... suppose I should log in and check to see if my Man City ticket is on there but I can't be bothered to get another new password...

It's very poorly advertised, and varies dependent on a lot of different scenarios, so it is anything but clear. In fact the per-match Ticket Tax was mentioned on the ST page (to encourage people to get an ST and not have to pay it), but isn't mentioned on the Wigan/Man U match by match information, which says to me that they're actively trying NOT to publicise it. Also, the fact that it has changed from a "by transaction" to a "by ticket" charge has been pretty much buried in amongst swatches of other ticketing information as well.

Michelle has access to lots and lots of bagged up coins, we have seriously considered doing this.

No but the principle applies to everyone else's cards as well...

I agree that experience won't make you run faster or think quicker, but already knowing what to do (ie experience) means you don't even have to work it out. The decision-making process in the Prem is split-seconds, but by definition of the leagues being meritocratic and the better players being in the higher division, it requires quicker decisions with more consequences than in the Championship. Ergo, knowing what to do and not having to work it out is even more vital in the Prem than anywhere else, because those slower decisions are more likely to be punished. The fact that plenty of players have thrived merely shows that they're able to compensate for that lack of experience until they're able to build up enough knowledge. It's also a lot more applicable to defensive players for whom shape and discipline are much more important than for strikers, who can get away with pretty much anything even if they ignore the system going forward. Thanks for the chance to get "ergo" into a sentence, btw.

Worryingly... "I agree with dune".

As you can access the pre-season purchases without registering your Customer/Client/Whatever number on the online system AND without even logging in, and there are no loyalty points for those matches, I'd suggest they're not keeping a record of those purchases against customer numbers. They probably changed the system when they realised they weren't selling many, so your friend got in before they changed it, I'm guessing, or you didn't log in/tell them your customer number so they're not against yours. The other possibility which often happens is that someone else is down as the lead purchaser and they've got the tickets against their customer id.

The point being that the price which is advertised is then the price you pay. That's not a bad thing and has been my main problem with Cortese Tax from the start. It also means that customers are able to make a judgement about whether they are prepared to pay that price. Also if the law is changed, either they include the cost in the ticket in which case ticket agencies are unaffected and just get their cut from the total cost, or they don't, in which case they are breaking the law. So the ticket company profitability won't be affected in any way.

It doesn't, but it's nice to know there are systems in place to make it less worthwhile for someone nicking your debit card details and running up online bills.

How is it irrelevant ? The Prem is one of the top leagues in the world with a lot of the world's best players in it ? How exactly is playing 300 Championship matches going to give you the experience to cope with Aguero running through you for 90 minutes ?

Took me zero minutes from the comfort of my bed with someone else doing it who needed to get Ambulant and Enabler which you can't do online, what's your point ? I also managed to get onto the ticket webpage in under 10 minutes but didn't need the contingency plan.

It won't matter so much after today, as you'd imagine there would always be a priority period based on loyalty points, so less of a scrum.

Nope. You just get the refresh clock at the bottom telling you it's still doing something. Then the ticket site launches when it sees fit to let you in. My mates standing outside the TO just managed to get ours (after literally an hour and a quarter queueing) and they were near the front !

Seems sensible at the mo, I was 147 and got in after about 8 minutes, during which time mates at the ground confirmed they were at the front so should be ok... Not that I could log in again having changed password yesterday!