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COMPUTER SOFTWARE CITED IN MIX-UP WITH FAIR TICKETS

By Molly Brown Daily News Reporter

(Published August 29, 2000)

Alaska State Fair goers who purchased their admission tickets through CarrsTix may have been a little confused and possibly overcharged.

The main problem, said Dean Phipps, the fair's marketing director, are the new computer program and hardware that tickets.com, the company that bought CarrsTix, installed in August.

"It became complicated for the fair-goer to understand," Phipps said.

Here's what happened.

When people purchased tickets in advance, they were charged $6, which did not include a service fee. That fee, Phipps said, is absorbed by the fair. Employees issuing the advance tickets used a program that required a service fee, so some tickets showed a $5 admission and $1 fee, he said.

It was misleading. The entire $6 went to the cost of admission. There was no service fee passed on to the consumer.

Similar problems occurred with advance-purchase three-day passes, Phipps said.

Even more confusing was the policy regarding rodeo and monster truck tickets. In years past, people could purchase a combined ticket that admitted them to the fair and to a grandstand event. A fair brochure published in July advertised the same deal, but tickets.com could not offer it.

Confused yet?

The two tickets were sold separately this time, Phipps said. The grandstand event always included a service fee, he said. He thinks people became concerned when their admission tickets also showed a service fee, even though customers never paid that fee.

It's all solved now.

CarrsTix and tickets.com representatives met with Phipps on Monday, and admission tickets will no longer show a service fee.

If you think you paid too much or were charged in error, the fair has set up a refund request program. Send your request by e-mail to info@alaskastatefair.org or by mail to Alaska State Fair, 2075 Glenn Highway, Palmer, 99645. Refund registration forms are also available at www.alaskastatefair.org.

Phipps said it is possible that some people were overcharged, but mostly it was just confusing.

"We want to make it right," Phipps said. "Anybody who feels like they didn't get the correct fee charged should contact us."

Reporter Molly Brown can be reached at mbrown@adn.com.

http://www.adn.com/metro/story/0,2633,190119,00.html

-- D (SuperSSD@aol.com), August 29, 2000