Customer Service Fail: The Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre

I've been waiting for months to get tickets to The Book of Mormon, which is coming back to L.A. at the Ahmanson Theatre early next year. They finally made tickets available and I dove in. Seats were already picked over so I decided to just bite the bullet and spring for the best seat I could find.

The Brother and I were just having a discussion yesterday about tacked on "handling fees" after I ordered tickets for us to see A Christmas Carol at A Noise Within in Pasadena, and I was griping about them tacking on an $8.50 "handling fee", especially since we're already paying over $70 per ticket, plus I printed the tickets at home. They don't have to do any "handling". In fact, maybe they should provide a small discount since they don't have to create our tickets since I'm saving them the cost using paper and ink that I've paid for on top of the cost of seeing the show.

As a consumer I find this annoying as hell. If the ticket is $80.50, just put $80.50 on the website. Don't tell me it's $72 then tack on a "handling fee", especially when you don't have to do any handling.

But A Noise Within's "handling fee" turned out to be small time compared to my BOM purchase:

Click to biggify if you can't see what I'm talking about. It has to be seen to be believed.

THIRTY-FIVE DOLLAR HANDLING FEE??? ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

Again, look, if you want $260+ for the seat, just say so. All this does is piss me off as a consumer. In fact, I was so pissed that I chose the option of making them mail the ticket to me. I could have easily opted for email/print at home, but for an extra $35 they can print it themselves and spring for a first class stamp. Suck it.