Assembly member slams Locog after he fails to get beach volleyball tickets

John Biggs, London Assembly member, today called the Olympic ticketing system the "worst ticket selling operation in the whole of human history" after trying to buy tickets in the latest sale.

Assembly member slams Olympic ticketing after beach volleyball failure
Assembly member slams Olympic ticketing after beach volleyball failure

The remaining Olympic tickets went back on sale at 11am on Wednesday (23 May).

In a statement, Biggs complained that some customers trying to buy tickets were confronted by a message saying "no tickets found" when they tried to reserve them. He said he had tried to buy tickets for a beach volleyball session on 28 July, costing £40 each.

Biggs added that the ticketing website was closed for 12 hours on Wednesday evening for scheduling updates, just 12 hours after tickets went on sale.

Biggs said: "It appears Locog has tried to win the gold medal for the worst ticket selling operation in the whole of human history. In addition to the ticket issue the site was taken down at 11pm on Wednesday evening for 12 hours of maintenance, preventing Londoners from purchasing tickets.

"Who in their right mind would schedule updates to a ticketing website in the middle of a 24 hour sales window. This beggars belief. I think it is reprehensible that Locog has been unable to design a ticket selling system that only offers ticket for sale that actually exist, rather than allow people to try and buy tickets that have long since sold out.

"I shall be writing to Seb Coe to find out why this has happened and for him to apologise to all those Londoners who are paying for the Olympics via their council tax but have been prevented for getting a ticket."

A London 2012 spokesperson told Event, "We are sorry Mr Biggs missed out on beach volleyball tickets, but we are delighted that tens of thousands of people were able to purchase tickets, and will be coming to the Games.

"The nature of a first come, first served system is that customers are queuing for a diminishing number of tickets - unfortunately this did mean some people got to the front of the queue and the tickets they were after were no longer available. The scheduled system update was to enable us to convert [Wednesday’s] sales into print files so tickets can be printed and ticketholders will receive them in good time for the Games. Mr Biggs is incorrect to say this is a 24 hour sale, remaining tickets are available right up until Games time."

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