Tuesday, October 20, 2009

A Special Day!

Happy Birthday to Mark Mastin and Brittney Hood!! Be sure and tell them to have a very Happy Birthday today. These are two very special people to the Gohring family. Brittney, because of her sense of humor and warm spirit, and Mark, well, what can I say? He is the first man who ever said to me, "I would have loved to run in my underwear with you."

Happy Birthday you two.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Buying online.... and why it sucks.


There is something inherently wrong with ordering tickets online. I just ordered a ticket for Scott for a concert he wanted to go to in Dallas in a couple of weeks. I ordered it from an online service that I will not identify, but let's call them Picketfaster. The "price" of the ticket was $22. Once I got in and pulled it up to order it, I was told that there was a $6 "convenience" fee to be paid, plus some other amount that I failed to read completely. I thought to myself, OK, this is where the Picketfaster folks make their money, I am cool with that. So we are at $30 for the ticket. Then the seriously stupid stuff started. I was asked if I wanted to print the ticket out on-line, "RECOMMENDED" it said. This would cost an additional $2.50, or I could opt to have them mail it to me for no charge. OK, in what parallel universe does that makes sense? I can print the ticket out myself, thus creating less work for anyone else, but I have to pay extra to do so? Ummmmm, no. Moving on through the process, I enter my credit card info, hit the complete purchase button and before I hit "Accept" I notice that there is now a 5.40 "Order processing fee". what the heck was the previous $6 "convenience" fee for then? Unavoidable I suppose, so I hit "accept", then I am asked if I want the "recommended" insurance on the tickets, (in the event they are lost in the mail, I suppose) for an additional $7. (Attention Picketfaster - If I fail to receive my tickets, I will be instructing my bank to deny payment on the credit card purchase - that is all the insurance I need.) At this point I am saying no to everything, finish up the transaction, and I am told that they will be mailing me my $22 ticket and charging me $36.50 for the transaction. That is a 66% markup on the price of the ticket which, even with paying someone to stuff a ticket in the envelope and slap on some postage, seems like an unbelievable margin.