A local Boston television program promoted an outdoor rib fest where chefs from around the country let you taste their version of barbeque ribs, chicken, etc. The price for admission to the event was $5 to $10 at the door (not including food), but discounts were offered at various locations and online.

In fact, if you bought tickets online, the price was only a dollar weekdays.

Note the absence of any fine print. However, when you go to buy the ticket, two surprises await.

*MOUSE PRINT: [click graphic for larger format]

Service fee of $3.00?  Shipping fee of $2.75?  A shipping fee when you print the tickets on your own printer? How could they advertise tickets for $1 when the actual price was nearly seven times that?

The CEO of the event responded to MOUSE PRINT* by saying, in part:

This is being fixed to $8 total for two online tix (everyone buys at least two). This was our arrangement per contract.

[Other places to buy tickets for less than $5 listed]

My company pays for the printing of the tickets and all costs associated with Will Call, which are significant for a 65 hour event.

My company does the best we can to give Phans as many options to get tickets as possible, especially since a lot would rather buy online for convenience and to avoid paying for gas.
 

While not particularly apologetic for charging a $2.75 shipping fee to print tickets on your own printer, the response Mouse Print* received subsequently from the actual ticketing service provider left no doubt that the home ticket printing charge was intentional:

Thank you for your e-mail. We can understand your concerns.

Ticket buyers who choose print at home tickets enjoy the convenience that this option offers and the easy and anytime-access to their tickets minimizing the potential loss of physical tickets by the carrier. The fee covers the technology and personnel required to make this option available at all. The fact that you use your own printer and paper is not factored in the $2.75 print at home fee.

Our fees reflect the percentage charges of the total amount we incur from the credit card company to charge/credit your account when you place the order. They also reflect the costs associated with providing online ticket sales. We cannot refund these fees if the show is cancelled or postponed as per the user agreement on the ticketing web page. — Musictoday, LLC

It appears that the ribs are not the only thing that could be burned at this event.

The December issue of Consumer Reports comes to subscribers wrapped in a full page offer for one year gift subscriptions to the magazine at a bargain price. “Best Gift Under $20″ the headline claims:

If you quickly fill out the postcard with the gift recipient’s name, you might be surprised come January when the bills arrives. It won’t be for $18.

*MOUSE PRINT:  The first subscription is actually $26 and only additional subscriptions beyond that are $18.

In effect, the offer is really “buy a subscription at regular price, get additional subscriptions at only $18.”

Why couldn’t they just say that?

[Shameless Plug: Consumer World can lead you to a deal to get a year of Consumer Reports for less than $18 without having to buy anything else!]

What Boston Red Sox fan wouldn’t have wanted to see the seventh and final game of the ALCS playoffs to see if their favorite team would make it into the World Series?

Ace Ticket, a large broker of tickets advertised the day of the big game that they had tickets available at “great prices.” [Boston Globe, October 21, 2007]

For this game, Ace Ticket prices ranged from a “low” of $309 for lower bleacher seats to $2450 for field box seats:

Those prices indeed are “great” (as in high), and it would be hard to imagine “greater” prices (although another seller had box seats behind the dugout for $5500 each). These tickets were marked up multiple times their face value. By comparison, based on prices for the regular 2007 season, bleacher seats normally sell for $23, and field box seats sell for $105. Playoff seats are priced higher: $25-$60 for bleachers, and $170 for field box seats.

[As an aside, Ace Ticket is selling bleacher seat tickets for game one of the World Series for $1095 and field box seats for $8900 each.]

Current Massachusetts law forbids the scalping of tickets by only allowing tickets to be resold by licensed brokers for no more than $2 above the face value plus certain limited business expenses.

So how does Ace Ticket get away with reselling tickets marked up so many times their face value? The state Department of Public Safety doesn’t enforce the law! Accordingly, Ace Ticket has tucked away this provision in their terms of sale:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Important: Also Note: In Massachusetts, the resale of tickets to certain events is regulated by statutes and regulations, including G.L. c. 140, ßß 185A ñ G, that authorize certain officials, including the Commissioner of Public Safety, to bring legal action against ticket resellers for claimed violations. In order to buy a ticket from Ace Ticket, you must acknowledge and agree that you cannot and will not bring any claim or cause of action in any private suit or administrative proceeding that is in any way based on Ace Ticketís alleged violation of any such statute or regulation, including, without limitation, G.L. c. 140, ßß 185A ñ G, and that your sole and exclusive remedy for the violation of any such statute or regulation will be to file a complaint or other notice with the public official responsible for enforcement of such statute or regulation. By purchasing a ticket from Ace Ticket, you expressly waive and forever release all claims that you, individually or as part of a class, might bring in a private action based on the alleged improper resale of regulated tickets in violation of any such statute or regulation, including, without limitation, G.L. c. 140, ßß 185A ñ G. I HEREBY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT I HAVE READ AND AGREE TO THE ABOVE-STATED TERMS.

Translation: You agree not to sue us if we overcharge you, and all you can do is complain to the state or the city (which history shows will do nothing to address your problem).

While one Massachusetts consumer activist, Colman Herman, has tried to fight the ticket brokers on his own (and is winning), remarkably the state legislature is poised to repeal the state ticket scalping law.

The result: ticket brokers 1, consumers 0.  Go Sox!

Mouse Print* has long stood for the proposition that the big print doesn’t always tell the full story, and that the fine print is often the only place to find the complete truth.

Challenging that assumption is the Goldman family’s design for the OJ Simpson book they are publishing, If I Did It.  The book describes how OJ hypothetically would have killed his wife and the Goldman’s son, Ron. As you can see from the cover (enhanced with yellow arrow and asterisk by Mouse Print*), for once, the fine print probably distorts the truth.

We have all seen the TV commercials for eHarmony, an online matchmaking service, with psychologist Dr. Neil Clark Warren. He touts the free personality profile offered on his website that matches you to potential mates based on 29 key dimensions of compatibility.

With 12 million members, surely your match might be among them. So it was great news to read their newspaper ad about 10 days ago promoting a free weekend to “try eHarmony for free.”  “All weekend long you’ll be able to communicate with people you’re matched with for FREE!”

Buried in the “help” section was a “special notice” sure to disappoint many:

*MOUSE PRINT: ”FastTrack and Photos are only available during the free weekend if you are a paid subscriber.” [website 11/17/06]

So, if you find the person of your dreams on paper, you will have no idea what they look like. Pardon the shallowness, but looks do matter. Now, since it is “free communication” weekend, you can simply ask for a picture, right?  Not exactly.

“Free communication” is a term of art used by eHarmony, and refers to an anonymous, structured communication system (“guided communication”) that uses sets of pre-defined questions that can be sent to the potential love of your life. You must go through four stages of “guided communication” before you get to more “open communication.” You cannot use “Fasttrack” that bypasses the canned questions and permits more opened-ended, but anonymous emails.

So, it appears you neither get to see nor really communicate instantly with your matches during the “free” weekend. For that, you need to subscribe to eHarmony for fees ranging from $59.95 (one month) to $251.40 (year).