Showing posts with label Olympic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Olympic. Show all posts

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Olympic tickets overcharge glitch

12 July 2011 Last updated at 15:25 GMT By James Pearce BBC Sports News Correspondent Grab of tickets website Some 150,000 people bought tickets in the second round About 700 people have been charged twice for Olympic tickets, the BBC has learned.

The glitch affected people who bought London 2012 tickets in the first phase of the "second chance" sale.

Ticketmaster, the company that has been managing the Olympic ticket process, was alerted to the error when contacted by customers.

The company says it has refunded all those affected and is confident there are no more cases still to be found.

This is the latest in a series of embarrassments which Ticketmaster has faced while running the London 2012 sale.

The initial six week application window had to be extended because many people were unable to log on to the website in the hours leading up to the deadline.

There were further problems with the site during the second sale process, which left 15,000 people without the tickets which they believed they had purchased.

Now Ticketmaster has been forced to apologise for a mistake that is believed to have led to a number of those using debit cards to incur overdraft charges.

Ticketmaster told the BBC that it would contact all those customers who were affected before the end of the day and would work with them "directly regarding any issues they may have experienced".

In a statement the company said: "We are aware of a Ticketmaster processing error affecting a small number of customers who purchased tickets during the London 2012 Olympic Games second chance ticketing process. This resulted in recent payment for tickets being processed in error twice on 6 July 2011.

"As soon as this issue was identified, a credit was actioned immediately to fully refund the second payment into the same account, which customers will see on their card statements. We would like to offer our apologies for this error and any inconvenience caused."

More than 750,000 tickets were sold to 150,000 applicants during the second round of ticketing which was open to people who had been unsuccessful in the initial ballot.

Meanwhile, a further window of ticket sales is still open until 17 July to enable people who were successful in the ballot to buy more tickets.

However only football and freestyle wrestling remain. All other sports are sold out.

Bogus sites warning

Some UK residents are finding tickets are still available from the national Olympic committees of other participating countries in the European Economic Area and the European Free Trade Association area.

Locog says people should be aware of bogus websites when searching for tickets from overseas sources and urged them to use the London 2012 website checker to verify the sellers were genuine.

In total more than 3.5 million Olympic tickets have now been sold, according to Locog.

The initial ballot system attracted criticism from various quarters - including from consumer group Which? - for taking the cash from applicants' bank accounts before they knew which tickets they had been allocated.

Fewer than half of those who applied got tickets in the first round, as demand outstripped supply in many events. In the men's 100m athletics final more than one million tickets were requested.


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Saturday, July 9, 2011

More Olympic tickets go on sale

8 July 2011 Last updated at 10:55 GMT Volleyball players Some 40,000 tickets for volleyball are still available People who obtained tickets for the 2012 Olympics in the initial first round ballot are getting an opportunity to buy seats for more events.

Some 1.5 million tickets for football, 40,000 for volleyball and 8,000 for freestyle wrestling are available.

They are being sold on a first-come first-served basis in a process which finishes at 1800 BST on 17 July.

Some 700,000 people are eligible to buy tickets. Another 150,000 people ordered tickets in an earlier phase.

Those were particularly people unsuccessful in the initial first round ballot.

Meanwhile, an unofficial Facebook-based ticket sharing website has been set up.

Organisers of the Ticket Collective website say it is a free information site offering people unable to get tickets the chance to get some by letting them know which of their Facebook friends have spares.

It is not a ticket reselling or swapping site, however, but organisers say it may help to prevent touting.

Organiser Andrew Mobbs said: "With the recent demand for Olympic tickets being so high and the confusion around who got what tickets, we decided to see if we could do anything to make the process more transparent and sociable."

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (Locog) said it was illegal to sell tickets at more than face value and that an official website will be set up next year for people to re-sell tickets they no longer want.

Second-chance sale

In total more than 3.5 million Olympic tickets have now been sold, according to Locog.

The available tickets for football, volleyball and freestyle wrestling cover 58 sessions and 130 price categories. All other sports are sold out.

The football tickets include men's and women's matches at Wembley Stadium, London; City of Coventry Stadium; Millennium Stadium, Cardiff; Hampden Park, Glasgow; St James' Park, Newcastle; and Old Trafford, Manchester.

Football made up the bulk of the tickets available in the second-chance sale as the matches are played in large venues.

The volleyball tickets are for men's and women's sessions based at Earls Court, while the freestyle wrestling is taking place at Excel in east London.

Another major round of ticket sales will take place in early 2012.

A full list of available sessions and price categories have been published on the official 2012 website.

Some UK residents are finding tickets are still available from the national Olympic committees of other participating countries in the European European Economic Area and the European Free Trade Association area.

Locog says people should be aware of bogus websites when searching for tickets from overseas sources and urged them to use the London 2012 website checker to verify the sellers are genuine.

On Thursday, London 2012 chairman Lord Coe urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to return any unwanted tickets after "phenomenal and unprecedented" demand in the UK.

Special rail fares for London 2012 Olympic spectators have gone on sale.

Available from a dedicated website, the tickets cover every rail station and every venue.

The 2012 Games Train Tickets are designed to be flexible and will allow spectators to change the time they return should an event be unexpectedly rescheduled, or if they wish to remain longer.

They can be used to travel to and from London and all other places hosting Olympic events and there will also be a Games travelcard for getting around London.

There will also be a special Olympic and Paralympic train timetable which will see the operation of thousands of extra trains.


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Saturday, May 21, 2011

AUDIO: Who wants £36,000 of Olympic tickets?

Millions of Britons who applied for Olympic Games tickets are to find out if they were successful in getting any.

Stephen Hunt, an insolvency practitioner by trade, bid for ?36,000 worth of tickets.

"I paused when I saw how much I was applying for... but the chances of getting one ticket out of that lot is quite small," he said.

"The odds of me getting all of them are hundreds of billions to one."

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Olympic ticket cash to be taken

16 May 2011 Last updated at 13:56 GMT Olympic website image Money for Olympic tickets has started to be withdrawn from some accounts The organisers of the London Olympics have started taking money from the accounts of people whose applications for tickets have been successful.

The process will continue until 24 June, when people will be notified of the tickets they have won.

A London 2012 spokesman said people should make sure they have sufficient funds available.

About 1.8 million people made more than 20 million applications for the 6.6 million tickets.

The ticket application process lasted for six weeks, which ended on 26 April.

This will mean that in some cases, money will be taken out of people's accounts before they know which tickets they have been able to buy. The Olympic organisers will be processing the ticket applications up to 10 June.

Random allocation

Refunds are not available but London 2012 will launch its official resale platform early next year, through which people can offer their tickets for resale at face value - although there is no guarantee they will be bought.

EBay, the internet auction site, has said it will not allow the resale of Olympic tickets.

Any tickets unsold by organisers are expected to be made available in further ballots, along with the possibility of additional tickets for higher-profile events being released as venues are tested and capacities finalised.

Stephen Hunt Stephen Hunt, an insolvency practitioner, has applied for ?36,000 of Olympic tickets

BBC Olympics correspondent Gordon Farquhar said that the remaining tickets would be sold according to a set structure.

He said: "Those who applied and got no tickets will be given first pick in a sale of what's left. Those who got some tickets but not all will get second preference in the remainder sale.

"Those who got them all will get third preference. Only those who applied in the first round of ticketing will get this second chance now, on a first-come first-served basis.

"Later in the year, a general sale of the remainder of the tickets will take place."

Card issues

Peter Kelly from Epsom, Surrey, may not have the chance to get Olympic tickets as his credit card company, Barclaycard, for security reasons, has replaced the card that he used to apply for tickets.

He has applied for two tickets for 18 events, totalling nearly ?4,000, and described watching the Olympics as "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" which he did not want to miss.

He said: "I today received a letter from Barclaycard saying they needed to replace my card. This is the card I used on my Olympic ticket application, so it needs to be working when the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games processes my application for the tickets, or my application will fail."

A spokeswoman for Visa said that anyone with card issues should contact LOCOG, make them aware of the situation, and provide details of their new Visa card.

Stephen Hunt, an insolvency practitioner from London, has bid for ?36,000 worth of tickets.

"I paused when I saw how much I was applying for, how much it would actually come to but if you think about it, it's like rolling or getting heads twenty times in a row," he said.

"The chances of me getting all my allocation are almost nil, in fact the chances of getting one ticket out of that lot is quite small.

"I sort of took a range of things I wanted so the 100 metres, the opening and closing ceremonies, then it's my daughter's birthday in the middle so something for her in the gymnastics.

"If I can get two or three, hopefully one for my daughter's birthday, I'd be happy."

Completely random

The opening and closing ceremonies were expected to be massively over-subscribed, as well as big athletics events, swimming nights, track cycling and some of the cheaper tickets.

Many people applied for several events, hoping to boost their chances of getting tickets.

Standard prices range from ?20 to ?2,012 - the top ticket for the opening ceremony - and oversubscribed events will be decided by a ballot.

Ticket allocation is completely random, so some unlucky applicants might end up without any, while others may be allocated all the tickets they applied for.

A further two million tickets for the Paralympic Games go on sale on 9 September.


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