Paying-through-nose for Oly tickets continues

Our friends at CoSport, exclusive ticket supplier to the U.S. for the 2010 Winter Games, are at it again.

The company recently sent out a memo to all of us lucky ticket buyers who managed to leap the formidable hurdles over the past year. It contains one last set of marching orders to get tickets in hand before the cauldron is lit.

Subject: Ticket shipping/pickup.

Bottom line: You have until only until 11:59:00 Eastern Standard Time, Aug. 11 to add or remove the "shipping" option on your ticket order. And if you know what's good for you, you'll add it and gladly pay the 35 bucks, which, apparently, is the current cost of a first-class U.S. stamp in the company's hometown of Far HIlls, N.J.

Of course, you can still come pick up your tickets at Will Call. But CoSport reminds you that if you should choose that option:

-- ONLY the account holder will be able to pick up the tickets at the will-call office, the exact location and hours for which have not been announced. By the way: There's only one office, and it'll be in Vancouver. That means those of you attending the majority of Games events in Whistler will have to add an entire new stop on your itinerary if you don't want to pay the immense shipping fee.

-- The will call window will be staffed by a single employee, Leonard, a 76-year-old former U.S. Postal worker who moves like molasses on a January morning in the Northwest Territories. Don't fluster him; he will get to you as soon as he can. The office will be open from 12:01 a.m. to 12:07 a.m. on alternate Thursdays.

-- Anyone camping, fainting, eating or swearing in the will-call line will be escorted to the pokey by Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

OK, we made those last two up (although the first one is dead serious). But we wouldn't be surprised to see them come down the pipe next.

On the plus side: CoSport has now devised a way for people with mulitple ticket orders to pay only one shipping fee!

Tickets will be mailed in mid-December, the company says. Although that, too, is "subject to change."

So what will most people do? Probably fork over the dough. I just did. For the record, the $35 delivery charge (for that kind of money, I expect the tickets to be hand-delivered, on a plush pillow, by Jacques Rogge) comes on top of a $6 "fulfillment" fee, whatever that is.

My financial bottom line: I bought two tickets to the 50K mass start cross-country ski race -- some of the cheapest in the entire Olympics. These "B" category tickets cost $34 each -- probably about a third more than they would have cost in Canada. On top of that $68, which in itself probably contains a hefty profit, CoSport managed to extort from me an additional $41.

So, to get what should have been about $40 worth of tickets in real Canadian prices (even less with the exchange rate), I paid CoSport a grand total of $109.

To repeat: Nice gig if you can get it.