An open letter...

Dear the NEC Group,

I was intrigued to discover that a ticket for one of your events, while advertised and indeed priced at £20, in fact cost me £27.50, an increase of, ooh, 37.5% by my reckoning. A £3.00 booking fee I can live with, though I wish you'd just include this in the advertised price. A £1.50 "order charge" on top seems a little odd since surely booking fee and order charge are the same thing? Evidently there are some degrees of semantic differentiation I'm not aware of. But still, I was happy to click OK for £24.50 since you were sending me the tickets, albeit that being the only option available. To then be charged, without notice, or at least without any notice I noticed on your mildly substandard website, an addition £3.00 "Special Delivery Surcharge" was, well, I wouldn't use the word "outrageous" nor "surprising". No, I'd prefer "fucking typical".

Still, I fully expect to enjoy The Flaming Lips when they play the NIA in November. However I will probably not be buying any drinks for fear of a glass or beer-mat surcharge being surreptitiously removed from my pocket in the process.

This message will not be sent to you directly as there's simply no point.