Hidden

Richard Blumenthal says company acts like it has ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ as records show it upping fees to cut lossesTicketmaster quietly raised other fees after US crackdown on hidden chargesSign up for the Breaking News US newsletter emailSenators slammed Ticketmaster for raising ticket fees following a regulatory crackdown on hidden charges as revealed in a report by the Guardian last week.The Federal Trade Commission last May began requiring Ticketmaster to disclose concert ticket fees upfront – a practice known as all-in pricing. The company eliminated the order processing fee it charged at the the end of a transaction to comply with the rule. Continue reading...

Documents obtained by Guardian show company increased different fees to ‘offset revenue loss’ from FTC rule changeFollowing a wave of regulations banning the surprise fees that appear at the end of a transaction, Ticketmaster stopped charging the extra few dollars it added to each order at checkout. Typically shared with the venue, the order processing fee was a boon to a global platform that sells hundreds of millions of tickets a year.But documents obtained by the Guardian show that while Ticketmaster eliminated this fee to comply with the rules, the company simply raised the cost of different fees in a number of its venues to ensure it didn’t lose money. Continue reading...

National peak body will work with community-controlled organisations to address rates of violence against Indigenous women and girlsGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA new national body to reduce rates of family and sexual violence toward Aboriginal women and children will launch in Canberra on Wednesday, after years of campaigning by Indigenous women’s safety advocates.First Nations women are seven times more likely to be killed and 27 times more likely to be hospitalised due to family violence than non-Indigenous women, and reducing rates of violence is a Closing the Gap target. Continue reading...