E-commerce = in-E-fficiency
In buying tickets for movies, plays, and concerts lately I’ve noticed that it is always more expensive to buy tickets over the Internet than in-person and usually more expensive on the Web than on the phone. If we assume that the prices reflect costs it turns out that it is cheaper to pay a human to sit in a booth all day and/or to pay a human to sit next to a phone all day than it is to write some Web scripts and keep a server running.
Given that the hardware folks have done their share and that bandwidth is cheaper than ever, this is a truly sad commentary on the continued stagnation in the world of software. The great Internet pundits of the 1970s (and the folks who copied those predictions and spit them out as their own in the 1990s) predicted a world of seamless commerce and lower prices. How wrong they were.
[Tickets for what you might ask? Tonight is McCoy Tyner at the Charles Hotel ($3.50/ticket extra); Friday night is the Boston Symphony Orchestra ($10/order extra). Last night was the Harold Pinter play The Birthday Party at Harvard's American Repertory Theater ($3.50/ticket + $1.50/order extra). I'd give you my review of the play but this email review from a friend is much more to-the-point:
"I saw the Pinter on Sunday night, and all I can say is that it made the invasive gynecological procedure I had to have the next day seem pleasant in comparison."
I guess they won't be quoting her review in the advertisements...]
