Ticket Companies Advised To Be More Transparent With Prices

Ticket companies should tell customers the full price of a ticket before purchase, a consumer organisation has said.

Which? says apparent hidden costs, such as booking and postage fees, are often not made clear enough to the customer.

"Airlines have taken a bashing recently for adding sneaky extra charges to the cost of tickets, but they're not the only ones," said Neil Fowler, editor of Which?

"We found ticket agencies hiking the cost of tickets by nearly a third with various fees and postage costs.”

Mr Fowler said that the charges only become clear when “people are well into the buying process”.

The organisation also said that the charges, which are often not refunded if an event is cancelled, failed to represent the true value of the service and can add up to 30% extra to the price of a ticket, reports the BBC.

In response to the report, ticket agencies have argued that they are entitled to retain the booking or postage costs because they have done work for the customer.