Moral Dilemma #2346: Event Tickets and How to Sell Them

Once upon a time if you wanted to sell your event tickets you either a) found a friend who wanted them, b) took out an ad in the newspaper or put up a notice on a community bulletin board, or c) put on a baseball cap, hoodie, and sunglasses and stood outside the venue in front of your black mini-van.

Well, times have changed. The internet - whether we like it or not - has made ticket buying (and reselling) a more horrific form of exploitation than when Nike first stumbled upon Indonesia's "cheap laborer market".

In the internet age, if one is on top of things enough (read: awake or online when tickets first go on sale and with a ready and able finger to hit 'refresh' with) it is incredibly easy to buy several bajillion tickets for which you have no real intent on using and then reselling them to those who actually want to go who you coincidentally dooped out of buying their own from the site. I'm not saying EVERYONE does this, but it seems like more and more people are (I'm not crying the "hard economic times" wolf, but I mean, I could).

Granted, it's not always so extreme. There are still normal, sincere (naive) people out there looking to go to shows. But even then, it is not all sunshine and lollipops. We have all been there. Even now, when I am buying tickets to an event think "I should get at least one extra … I don't know which of my friends wants to go, and if no one ends up wanting to, I can always resell it."

This mentality is worrisome in and of itself, but beyond that, I am brought to my moral dilemma of the day. IF you want to (or in my case, HAVE to) sell your ticket to an event - how much do you charge ?

It is only human (excuse me, I meant American) to want to make a profit here. But the question becomes how MUCH of a profit. At what point is it no longer you trying to make a couple bucks off of some miscarried plans, but you trying to exploit those who you beat out in the game of time ?

I have sold tickets before, and usually I consider the fact that I'm going to have to take time out to go meet the buyer and find wherever they are. It's annoying, and I also take into account that I don't really know who I'm meeting and value my life (read: no serial killers/rapists need apply). I usually tack on $20 to the face value for this ... even though they're usually sort of doing me a karmic favor (waste not, want not, kids !).

Another factor to be accounted for is those darn purchasing fees. Obviously, one has to deal with and reimburse oneself for all those insane surcharges (fee for using bandwidth, fee for being cool enough to have access to "presale", fee for having a registered account on the ticket site, etc, etc) and it's easy to feel like if the major ticket companies are tacking on "convenience fees", well, shouldn't you ?

However, on the flipside of all this; I have also found myself buying resold tickets before. And sadly, I find it hard to report that other people do not seem to have such a moral dilemma with charging me until I am begging my credit card company for mercy so hard my kidneys explode.

So where does the axe fall ?

I find myself unsure of what to do. I have two tickets to a highly anticipated show in a highly accessible city and I find myself wondering do I take the easy road out and make a killing on having my plans to go fall through ? Or do I do what I would want someone to do to me - have mercy and keep it reasonable ?

The choice is almost too hard to make - which really depresses me in the first place. I bought the two tickets - with fees for $56.00. I think if anyone asks, I'll be charging 35.00 each (the little extra to cover my train fees and the time I'll probably take out of work to meet the person) and hope that my postive karma goes out and prospers.