October 10, 2009 1 Comment

I received an email this morning with a link to an article ab0ut SeatKarma.com. The link was to an article in the Houston Chronicle (see link below) which was very exciting to me. It got me thinking about all the ticket purchases we make on the Internet now and just what that means to us.

Two weeks ago I went to a conference with a group of friends. They reserved a hotel room using an Internet site. When we arrived we learned there were not two queen beds in the room but two double beds. This is not what we were told when the tickets were purchased, and not the best when you are sharing a bed. We had also paid for tickets for breakfast which we discovered only covered two of us, not all four, and, that additional breakfast tickets would cost $12.95 each! For breakfast! Needless to say we were upset with the ticketing site we had used.

Then there were the airline tickets which were purchased but the site failed to disclose that there was an additional cost for baggage if the baggage was not paid for prior to arriving at the airport. They also forgot to tell us there were additional airport and insurance fees for the rental car.

All this reminiscing made me wonder about other ticketing sites, so I checked out the ones mentioned in the Chronicle article and discovered some huge differences. One covered fever primary ticket sellers so choice was more limited. One sent you to another site which listed several ticket sellers that you needed to check out on your own to determine which tickets they had available.  The third site I checked did not have any tickets available for the play I entered even though the other sites had dozens. You know I have an interest in Seat Karma as it was founded by my son, so I am obviously a little biased, however, the real point of this post is to point out the care we must take when purchasing tickets on line.

The holiday season is approaching and we may be traveling. We may be taking our family to a special event such as a production of The Nutcracker or another holiday show. We may be purchasing tickets as a gift. Be careful. Call the hotel yourself and ask a few questions. Check out the airline or rental car company’s website to get additional details and then if you can purchase less expensively on line do it, but have all the facts first.

One of the amazing thing I love about Seat Karma is that with many venues you can “see” your view of the stage from the seat you choose. That means you know ahead of time if there is a pillar in the way of your view. If you are unfamiliar with a venue, and not using Seat Karma, then call the theater and ask about the view from the seats you are considering.

For most of us staying in a hotel, flying and attending a play or concert is a treat and a strain on the budget. Do all you can to protect yourself, and in the long run, save money.

We may have saved money on our hotel room but by the time we paid for two extra breakfasts we really hadn’t saved anything at all.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/tech/news/6666418.html

Each month Seat Karma chooses a charity and donates a percentage of their gross sales for the month to that charity. Check out this month’s charity. They are doing a great work.

http://www.dawnonline.org/

Money Savers

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