CF exhibition or totally normal nowadays?

[HappyPeach]

I'm just booking a ticket to the Knitting & Stitching show in London and they charge £3.95 to post you out a paper ticket. (Entry cost £18.50). If you choose an 'E-ticket', ie you show a barcode on your phone, they charge £3.50!!! Wtf? This is in addition to the entry ticket. It costs literally nothing to email a ticket, how can they justify charging £3.50 for it? If this is normal now, I must be behind the curve because I've never been charged to receive an e-ticket before. Aibu?

There is a back office cost to generate an email ticket though.

I fully expect they're using a ticketing partner to sort this and the back office cost will be pence. It will certainly not be £3.50. The £3.50 is probably the % of total cost which the company owes to the ticketing partner.

£3.50 is an outrageous price and would put me off - I would rather they raised ticket prices than made it a ticketing fee. The optics are just better IMO.

There is a back office cost to generate an email ticket though.

which is not the same as printing and posting a ticket - that would normally cost more.
The back office costs of ticketing should be included in the price.
Frankly? I'd not go and tell them why.

I think it's piss-taking. It's all electronic. No-one's pressing any buttons apart from me to purchase. And the computer program to allocate tickets and take money hasn't just been written for this show, it'll have been around for ages.