No, not all too harsh.

Oh, and I'm not positive, but I *think* that a business that tries to add a charge to "recoup the cost of the merchant transaction fee you'll have to pay to the credit-card issuer" is actually violating their merchant agreement.

Yeah, but that's the trouble -- nobody knows just WHAT the charge is for. As they say in football, it is what it is.

Ticketmaster sucks! I get ripped off by them constantly. I am going to 6 concerts in May/June and I had to use ticketmaster to get tickets for 5 of them. Be glad you only paid 26%. Sometimes it can go up to 40-50% per ticket. The convenience fee goes up if the price of the ticket goes up. Pretty lame.