The same seat at an upcoming Harry Styles concert at Madison Square Garden could cost $455.Or it could cost $517.
The difference comes from the fees that ticket broker StubHub adds.But how much those fees are — and why they can vary — is unclear.
NBC News gathered nine volunteers to check the same StubHub ticket at the same time for Styles’ Oct.30 concert.
They saw eight different prices.The ticket’s base price, set by the seller, was the same for everybody.
The big differences came from the fees StubHub added.One person was charged $72 in fees, while another was charged nearly twice as much, $134.When the volunteers looked up the same ticket using incognito mode in Google’s Chrome web browser, a private session that doesn’t use cookies, saved logins or site storage, the price discrepancy declined to $19 between the highest- and lowest-priced ticket.
When they checked on StubHub’s phone app without being logged in, almost everybody saw the same price, with the exception of just one person who would have been charged $3 more.The days of a single, transparent price tag are fading.
In the digital era, prices can change by the minute, without warning or explanation.Companies can run price experiments, where shoppers are given a range of prices at random to determine the optimal price for profitability.
Some companies use surveillance or personalized pricing, where they charge individualized prices based on a customer’s data.StubHub, one of the largest online ticket resale platforms, has recently faced scrutiny over its business practices, including advertising ticket prices without clearly disclosing mandatory fees, leading to a $10 million Federal Trade Commission settlement, and listing “ghost tickets” from a seller who didn’t actually have them.The company said it does not use personal information in setting prices but confirmed that ticket prices can vary.In a statement, StubHub said it “regularly runs randomized tests on pricing — ...