dune

£75 to watch a game on TV. Cortese clearly has plans to rip off fans off big time when he can.

The booking fee is a con. You can dress it up any way you like, but it's still a con.

I am not Chester Perry. I've already told Dulldays this and now i'm telling you.

Financially they may not have shot themselves in the foot becuase if the football is winning/promotion football we the punters will cough up, but the club have lost a lot of good will and moves like this eat away at the feelgood factor. What price can be put on that? Treating fans like mugs is not a smart move in the long run because we all have good memories when it comes to little things like this. I rememeber going to Fratton Park the season we went down and parking at the SMS car park. For the first time the club charged everyone £1 to park. Bugger all in real terms, but it was the principle of the thing and everyone who had to pay it felt cheated. Instances like this are really not worth the financial gain because that single £1 gain for the club can cost them more in the long run because from that moment on I thought two can play at that game and made a conscious decision to cut back on spending on matchday extras.

Don't get rattled dulldays.

Would you be happy for this to go to a poll?

Which makes you a dimwit. Everyone else payed with a debit card where possible to avoid the fee.

You just said what everyone else was thinking.

Exactly.

I have already called it a stealth tax because that is exactly what it is. I have no issue with paying a fee that covers postage and packing, but of the £3 less than 20% is P+P so this is not the club covering it's costs, this is blatent profiteering.

They won't accept a SAE - you can be sure of that! Cost of an evelope = 10p, Cost of a stamp = 39p, so the ticket tax is £2.50 for a member of staff to put a ticket in an envelope. I wish I could earn £2.50 for piece work like that!

So justify the SFC £3 ticket tax when most other clubs charge £1.

I agree, but what happens if the season isn't the fly away success on the pitch that you (and Cortese) have taken for granted?

Rubbish and you know it. The ticket tax is pure profiteering.

I think it will because Saints historically had a high %age of st holders that travelled to SMS from outside the catchment area. Of these fans a high number missed the odd evening game. They will continue to miss them and some, but now they simply won't pay for a ticket wheras before they had already paid. I predict a sub 15,000 league gate next year and if and when this happens it'll be the fault of Cortese.

The ticket tax applies to all transactions paid online or over the phone. You will be taxed even if you collect the tickets from the club. In effect you're going to be taxed £3 for the pleasure of speaking to a member of staff over the phone as oposed to through a window.

I will laugh if we get record low st marys attendances next season because it'll make Cortese look very naive.

Do you care about being ripped off with a tax on top of the cost of a ticket?

Well given we're paying an extortionate premium of £3 we should expect special delivery and if the tickets do not arrive promptly then i'll be on the phone pdq clogging up the lines to complain. Also i've had a look at the law governing postal sales and if the ticket does not arrive you are entitled to a refund of the ticket tax. Last season on two occasions tickets i'd ordered didn't arrive and I had to pick up duplicates at away grounds. It is my understanding that if this happens once the ticket tax is brought in you will be entitled to a refund of the tax. I'd urge anyone who's tickets don't arrive and have to picked up to contact the ticket office and request that the £3 fee is refunded. This will cause the ticket office lots of problems and it will make you feel better. n.b if the club don't send the tickets by signed delivery i'm not sure how they could mitigate against unscrupulous fans claiming the tickets haven't arrived and thus sneakily recouping the £3....

Will Cortese have been sucessful if the scrapping of the installment scheme and the ticket tax result in fewer fans supporting the club at games both at home and away?

I notice that in 2007 Ben Chapman MP brought the issue of ticket taxes up in the house of commons. Given that both Southampton MP's are Saints fan would it be worthwhile contacting them to see if they can re-raise this issue in parliament?

But what David Luker fails to mention is that most other clubs that charge a ticket tax of £1 per ticket. Therefore anyone ordering less than 3 tickets at a time will taxed more than fans of other club that profiteer with their version of this dispicable scheme. When Tottenham played in the FA cup semi final the club got ticketmaster to organise the distribution and the spurs fans got charge a ticket tax of £2.50 per ticket + £4.95 postage - 10% extra on top of the ticket price. I think Cortese used the JPT final as a dummy run for this money grabbing scheme and I expect more instances in the future when the club stipulate online and telephone sales only to maximise the profits from this tax. This scheme is probably here to stay now, but if you are as disgusted about it as I am i'd urge you to go out of your way not to pay this tax by adding to the queue's at the stadiums ticket office and by purchasing away tickets at the away ground when possible, but if you have to pay the ticket tax try to pay by credit card to minimise the profit to the club, or pay by cheque to create extra work at the ticket office.

I've just checked the LUFC website and even Ken Bates only charges a £1 ticket tax. I could understand paying a £1 premium to cover postage costs, but £3 is nothing but profiteering and taking the p*ss out of us. Cortese clearly thinks we're all mugs there to be made fools of. I sincerely hope attendances drop next season and the club makes less money as a result of this con.

Yes I am. But i'll make sure I cut back on spending on superfluous extras to recoup the cost of the stealth tax on tickets.