The Price is Wrong!
The prices of show tickets these days are crazy, right? Who would pay over $500 for a silly little comedy/music/magic variety show?
Well, we don't think anybody should. At least not for ours. But far too often we see comments on social media along the lines of "$500 for tickets? Good for her, but that's way too rich for my blood."
Those comments led us to discover a few things.
First, ticket resellers are just plain super greedy. We kind of knew that going in, but didn't realize the extent of it. For example, the most expensive City Winery tickets were $50, and if you had asked us what we thought the aftermarket prices were, we'd top out at $100 in extreme cases, especially when the tickets were still available directly from the venue. But no, we saw them listed for as high as $1200.
Secondly, those extraordinarily high prices are very likely an anchoring tool. Anchoring is a negotiation tactic where you start at a price that is much higher than you want to be paid, so when a counteroffer comes in it's more in line with what you wanted in the first place. In ticket reselling, you'll see a few listings for ridiculous prices ($500, $750, $1000), and a seemingly much more reasonable price ($200) for another listing. But our brains don't immediately think "those are all priced way too high" - instead they think "that $200 ticket is quite the deal." So they probably never intended to sell that $1000 ticket - they just wanted you to buy the $200 one.
Thirdly, you can’t blindly trust search engines. The way many people are getting to these reseller sites is by going to a search engine and typing "Lucy Darling tickets" and clicking on the first link, which is almost always a bad site.
Actual prices for an actual show. (That’s not even on sale yet!)
What can we do about this?
We can't stop resellers. A lot of it is predatory, but it's not illegal. But we can help direct people to our website which gives links to official places to buy tickets. If you see someone posting about prices far exceeding the face value, please direct them to https://www.carisahendrix.com/tour so they can purchase from official sources.
But our shows often sell out, and the secondary market may be the only way to get tickets. We're not going to tell you how to spend your money, but we can lay down our own anchor. On our tour page, we list the range of actual ticket prices for each show. That way you can be better informed when making a purchase decision. Keep in mind, though, that our listed prices may not include taxes and fees, which vary from place to place (and that's a whole other upsetting thing I don't want to get into). But those fees are not going to double or triple that ticket price. If we say a ticket is $75 on our site, a vendor may add $15-$20 in fees, but no way is that ticket going to approach $150 or more.
And finally, we should make it clear that we do not handle tickets ourselves. Nobody on the team is able to sell you a ticket, or exchange your ticket, or reissue a lost ticket. If you ask, we are only going to direct you to the venue's website which you can find linked on our tour pages.
So be on the lookout for your fellow Darlings, and don't let them pay high prices unnecessarily.
