AN ANGRY music fan felt she was “ripped off” at being charged £5.85 extra for each ticket to see a group.

Sue Oliver said paying the extra money on top of her two £45 tickets for M People at the BIC “left a bad taste” in her mouth.

“It’s an absolute rip-off,” she said.

“And I still have to go and pick them up myself.

“I asked what the service charge was for and they said it was for running the ticket office.”

Sue, a retired social worker from Moordown in Bournemouth, bought the tickets for her and her husband Eric Wallington.

The 63-year-old, who has seen The Beatles and Led Zeppelin before, paid £101.70 in total.

“I’m really upset about it,” she added. “And it puts you off. It’s ridiculous but hopefully we’ll have a fantastic evening.”

A spokesman for BH Live, the charitable trust which runs the BIC for Bournemouth council, said the price of a ticket is set by event organisers and they do not receive payment to assist in the costs of running a ticketing service.

She said: “BH Live has made a huge investment and commitment to providing a ticketing service to ensure we can sell our own tickets and not rely on ticket agencies.

“In order to do so we add a service charge per ticket to cover the cost of operating a contact centre booking service, ticket offices for personal callers, labour, IT equipment and software development, credit card transaction fees, transaction services, ticket stock and all other costs associated with running a secure and customer centric ticketing service.”

“Over the past two years our ticketing service has received a 90 per cent good and excellent rating through our customer surveys.”