A few weeks ago my nephew posted something on Facebook about how he was "liking" Ticketmaster there for the sole purpose of continually trashing them on their fan page. I giggled and appreciated his consistent desire to fight the power.

Today, however, I joined him in the fight. I went to purchase a $25 concert ticket and got hit with the following fees:

• $7.30 convenience charge
• additional taxes of $.57
• $4.58 order processing fee

Add it up and that's $12.47. And that's not counting a $2.50 fee I could pay for the privilege of printing my tickets myself or a new $3.00 fee for will call. (As an aside, why will Ticketmaster mail tickets to me for free? Is there some law that doesn't allow them to tack on a $3.98 envelope fee and a $2.54 postage and handling charge? I can't believe they'd miss the boat that much)

So, needless to say, I'll go the box office and buy tickets. It might take a half hour and yeah, I value my time at more than $25/hour, but you know what I value even more? Making sure Ticketmaster doesn't get another dime out of my pocket.

So anyway, the point of this rant is that, clearly, some companies just shouldn't get involved in two-way social media. Ticketmaster has a Facebook fan page, but clearly, it's just another outlet for customer rage.

I understand that as long as enough people buy tickets, Ticketmaster doesn't really care about that rage. But what I don't understand is why they're bothering with social media in the first place. Bands and venues will promote their shows, so Ticketmaster has no need to be out there providing a forum for people to discuss how much they hate them. I mean, I appreciate the opportunity, but I don't understand it. They're wasting resources on social media that could be put to better use dreaming up more fees. What are they thinking?!?

As a serious question though, how can they get away with this? The government cracked down on bank fees, why the hell isn't Ticketmaster next in line?