Ticketmonster Hungry!

If you used Ticketmaster for the August 20 Ryan Adams show at Spreckels Theatre, you paid $25 for the ticket and $11.95 in fees (48 percent!).

When the concert was canceled, Ticketmaster refunded the cost of the ticket but not all fees, which included an $8.60 per-ticket service charge and a $3.35 per-order fee. Ticketmaster kept the per-order fee.

"It pretty much is the industry standard," says Lisa Langley of Virginia-based Music Today, which sold tickets for this year's Street Scene. If Street Scene had been canceled, Langley says the $7 per-ticket fee would not have been refunded.

"We don't play those kind of games," says Len Paul, owner of Soma and Soma's in-house ticket company Lunaticks. "When Sum 41 and Kottonmouth Kings canceled [in June], we refunded everything."

"We return everything," says Elaine, a Ticket Web customer service employee. Ticket Web is a San Francisco--based company that handles tickets for L.A. venues Spaceland and the Knitting Factory.