The Cure’s Robert Smith says he’s ‘sickened’ by Ticketmaster fees

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Robert Smith has lashed out at Ticketmaster after fans sent him screenshots of the high fees they were being charged when buying tickets to see The Cure live.

The frontman used Twitter to express his frustration at the pricing system by the ticket site, which he says artists cannot “limit”.

Tickets to the band’s North American shows went on sale on Wednesday (15 March). The band had already announced that tickets would be non-transferable to reduce resale and overpriced tickets.

Smith had tweeted addressing the decision to do this earlier in the day, claiming that the band had been assured that Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan process would help them “fight the scalpers”.

“We had final say in all our ticket pricing for this upcoming tour, and didn’t want those prices instantly and horribly distorted by resale,” he wrote.

“We didn’t agree to the ‘dynamic pricing’ / ‘price surging’ / ‘platinum ticket’ thing…,” wrote Smith on the new higher tier system Ticketmaster has been trialling.

He later detailed what he meant by the tweet, writing:  “I had a separate conversation about ‘platinum’ to see if I had misunderstood something… but I hadn’t!”

“All artists have the choice not to participate… If no artists participated, it would cease to exist,” he added.

However, when tickets went on sale on Wednesday, fans were reportedly hit by large fees that meant the cost of tickets was more than doubled.

Many posted screenshots of their ticket orders and tagged Smith in the tweets.

“I am as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘fees’ debacle,” Smith said in a series of tweets on Wednesday evening.

“To be very clear: The artist has no way to limit them. I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of answer I will let you all know.”

He closed his series of tweets writing: “I will be back if I get anything serious on the TM fees… In the meantime, I am compelled to note down my obvious recurring elephant in the room thought… that if no one bought from scalpers… then…”

The Independent has contacted a representative of Ticketmaster for comment.

Ticketmaster recently came under fire after the company’s website crashed when Taylor Swift released tickets for her tour, leaving thousands of fans devastated.

The company apologised in January, blaming a bot for the issues.