Hoodlums, the Tempe Record store, has posted a blistering letter on Facebook. It says that the Marquee, the rock club just north of Tempe Town Lake on Mill, has added a new $3 ticket fee onto tickets the store sells to Marquee shows.

According to the store, they’ve done business with the club and its management, Lucky Man Productions, in the past the same way they do business with other promoters: They get tix to shows and sell them to customers, adding on a $1 service fee.

The store says it won’t sell tickets with an added $3 fee. PHXated is a student of Ticketmaster’s remarkable and reprehensible business model; we consider Hoodlums’ statement of the issues involved trenchantly put:

We add on our dollar, and everyone is happy. No deception. No service charge for anything other than actual service.

Then we get our Phoenix tickets [i.e., the band Phoenix, which has an upcoming show at the Marquee], and we are being asked to start collecting three bucks above the advertised ticket price? Like we said: We don’t do that. We charge ticket price plus a buck, not ticket price plus four bucks. That’s not a fair price. Besides, why would we collect an extra service fee for someone else’s service, especially when that “someone else” hasn’t provided ANY extra service[?]

If the venue wants to charge extra for their service, that’s their prerogative to negotiate the higher ticket price. If the venue wants to charge extra at its own box office, so be it. If the promoter, or the artist, or management, or anyone involved in the negotiations needs to charge $28 for the tickets in order to make ends meet, we aren’t in a position to debate that either. While it is our sincere belief that concerts in general need to be cheaper in order for the concert industry to thrive again, setting the ticket price is none of our business. You need to make an extra three bucks? Make it a $28 ticket. Don’t make it a $25 ticket and ask us to collect $28.