TicketMaster May Stop Charging You For The “Convenience” Of Using Your Own Paper And Ink Soon

noah | May 19, 2008 2:30 am
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No, they’re not giving people a break on that “convenience fee” that they tack on for anyone printing their tickets at home. (Ha ha, suckers!) Instead, under a new plan, the ticketing behemoth is getting ready to cut out the paper part of tickets entirely–at least the sort of paper that you bring with you to the show, i.e. the same sort that can get lost, or resold by “secondary market” types who aren’t part of the Ticketmaster-approved secondary market TicketExchange. The idea behind TicketMaster’s new plan, which it’s debuting at Tom Waits’ galaxy-mapped tour this summer, is pretty simple: You buy the ticket online, then when you get to the venue, instead of having the ticket-taker (NB to TM HR: might want to change the name of this particular occupation) scan your bar code, s/he swipes your credit card, smiling the whole way. It’s the future! The video news release after the jump shows a flaw in the “paperless” plan, though.

Is that a–a printout at the very end? Or does it count as “paperless” if what’s eventually being spat out from the machine looks more like the end product of a label maker than anything else?

TicketMaster goes “paperless” [TicketNews via Coolfer]