The largest ticket providers are defying the renewed warnings from Seco. Ticketcorner continues to hide behind less than credible justifications that it requires extensive technical control infrastructures to provide electronic tickets, as these - so the argument goes - are easy to copy. The second-largest ticket provider also has a few things to criticise. Starticket's charging practice has always been compliant, emphasised Starticket CEO Peter Hürlimann. It is possible to print out tickets free of charge, but only up to eleven days before the event. It took the NZZ am Sonntag's research to "discover this weak point", Hürlimann later admitted.
The ticket fee story is nothing new. Back in 2011, various media reported on the trouble with the additional fees for print@home tickets. Little has happened since then.
After SRF broke the story again in May of this year in the Kassensturz report on "Illegal fees for online tickets", Seco finally saw a need for action. "We will oblige ticket providers to sell tickets at the price printed on the ticket," said Guido Sutter, Head of Legal Affairs at Seco, at the time. It should be possible for consumers to purchase a ticket at the advertised price via a frequently used sales channel - e.g. via an advance booking office or print@home option, and using a standard means of payment. At the end of July, a written request was sent to all ticket providers to check the legality of their fees and adjust them if necessary.
Now, as the example of TICKETINO shows, it is possible to adapt one's own infrastructure in order to act transparently and in compliance with the law, while at the same time giving ticket buyers the opportunity to purchase tickets at the advertised price.
Detailed research by NZZ am Sonntag confirms that, unlike its competitors, TICKETINO has not charged any additional fees for print@home orders since the beginning. Guido Sutter also refers to TICKETINO: "How can it be that a small provider can comply with the regulation and the largest cannot?".
Tamedia itself provides an explosive epilogue to the latest developments on the subject of legally compliant ticket fees. The original article from the NZZ am Sonntag was probably rewritten and published by the Tagesanzeiger and the Bund.
This was intended to make the abuses at Starticket less conspicuous to the reader and the TICKETINO name did not appear at all - a prime example of the freedom of the press that Tamedia seems to have cultivated since it acquired a majority stake in Starticket...
