Ticketmaster Canada is in a hot, burning seat right now. If you have ever purchased tickets from the company, you may have been disappointed to see a noticeably high fee for "processing and handling" which was slapped onto the price of the ticket in your cart. And now, the authorities have gotten word of it and slapped Ticketmaster with a major fine by the Canadian Competition Bureau. Accordingly, the company must pay up $4.5 million dollars CAD, which is approximately $3.4 million dollars USD, because they have been profiting from the inflated ticket prices for years. Moreover, they were also believed to be falsely advertising prices to lure in clients. The actual word from the Canadian Competition Bureau is that the company is being fined for "allegedly misleading pricing claims in online ticket sales."
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A statement was released by the CCB: "The Bureau’s investigation concluded that Ticketmaster’s advertised prices were not attainable because they added mandatory fees during the later stages of the purchasing process. In the Bureau’s view, the price representations were misleading even though the amount of the fees was disclosed before consumers completed their transaction. The Bureau concluded that the additional fees often added more than 20% and, in some cases, over 65% to the advertised prices." The Bureau's Commissioner of Competition, Matthew Boswell, affirms he will remain vigilant with ticket platforms and the advertising of ticket prices on other platforms for the safety of ticket purchasers.