Charging for emails

Me and the better half are taking the grandson to London for the weekend this weekend, so today I started to book tickets for places to go.

When did it become the norm to charge for sending tickets by email? Most ticket venues want £1 per ticket sent by email.

How much does it cost to send an email? Especially when I'm saving them the cost of paper, printing, envelope stuffing and posting?

Thats on top of all the other surcharges (booking fees, credit card fees etc)

Never heard of that - sounds ridiculous

Ticketmaster charge me £2.50 to deliver gig tickets by Email.

Probably when they thought they could get away with it.

After all, why relinquish the profit they make from the booking fee just because you want the convenience of getting an email

Dear Mr Nixon,

Thank you for booking on the London eye.

Ticket cost: £5

Queueing surcharge: £20
Website fee: £3
Misc. charges £2

Total: £30 +VAT

Remember when the good old days when you paid for a ticket and you got a ticket?

What winds me up is the way they try to sneak in the charges. After filling in the first page you get told about the credit card charge, after the next page you get told about the booking fee and then after the third page you get told about the email charge.

I really dont care about the breakdown of a ticket price, all I want to know is how much it is going to cost me. Just add it up and give me the one figure, its not much to ask, especially as none of these charged are optional

Sounds they've been to like the Ryanair school of e-commerce !

We had a supplier today that added £3.50 on their invoice to cover the cost of emailing some data to us!

When tacklled about it they had no answer.  crazy

This is absolutely crazy - totally ridiculous.  I bet if anyone actually challenged it in court, they'd win.  I can't see how it's possible to justify more than a fraction of a penny cost to send an email.

I'd be making a fortune if I could charge by the email but I think this thread points to something that is happening in many industries. Companies are reducing headlines rates by sneaking in hidden charges that either make it the same price or more expensive than it was going to be anyway.

It's something that's happening a lot in the vehicle leasing industry. As an example, a competitor could be a fiver a month cheaper than the price I can get for a client but charge an upfront 'doc' fee which costs £200-500. They pull enquiries in through their headline rate but when you get down to it, the extras make it more expensive plus you have to pay much, much more upfront. Maybe some will start charging for emails and sending letters, etc.