Perhaps it's just me, but...
the idea of the "organisers" LOCOG being able to raid your account without being able to say what you've got tickets for is incredible.
Almost as incredible as the "insolvency expert" who has ordered £36K worth with no means of paying for them all. He believes his odds of getting all tickets is akin to "getting twenty heads (in heads and tails) in a row, so the odds of getting tickets are actually quite small - hopefully".
But not in the same league as LOCOG saying they may take the money twice, "If we get towards the end of the process and someone has dropped out of the ballot and you are next on the list to get the tickets, and we have already taken out a payment for other tickets you were allocated, there may be a second payment taken out,"
If I set up a business pulling stunts like that I'd expect to be locked up for it.
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Agreed, AJH. Presumably it's all part of the Olympic sporting ideal, along with requiring customers to use one of the sponsor's cards to pay.
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Will it be like the cricket, where if you turn up to the stadium with the "wrong" brand of cola in your picnic hamper then it gets confiscated?
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Only if you try to sell it;OK for personal consumption.
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>> Agreed, AJH. Presumably it's all part of the Olympic sporting ideal, along with requiring customers
>> to use one of the sponsor's cards to pay.
Thats not an unreasonable stance, given that
a: Visa paid a lot of money to be an A sponsor, and some of that money means you wont have to fork out more of your taxes for the games
b: Visa have waived credit card charges for the olympic organisors, so thats again less money coming out of your taxes.
and I assume that given your stance, you havent applied for any anyway, so what do you have to moan about.
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It seems like a reasonably sensible system, given the huge demand and the desire to give people an equal chance to buy them.
The alternative would be to put them on open sale. That might not be a bad idea, but would mean that people would have to queue or wrestle with an online system, that sold out in the first few minutes, with lots of tickets going to touts.
Nobody is going to get a ticket for an event they didn't request. The real problem is that some people have gone a bit mad, and put down every event they can find, just so they can get their Olympics ticket.
If they didn't want to see the fencing, or the table tennis, they shouldn't have put it down...
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How else would you do it? Its not the fault of the Games organisers. If people didn't put in for £36ks worth of tickets that they dont really want or cant afford, then there wouldnt need to be a ballot would there.
You cant mess about, in areas of exceptional high demand, phoning people up asking why the account bounced, and you cant have 100 people manning phones when 6 million want tickets.
Its been done the only way it could be, fairly, and I suppose the churlish ones on here moaning and whining havent even applied for any, so what do you have to gripe about anyway.
I have applied for 700 quids worth, premier events and finals, which I would like to see. If I get them all I shall be delighted, if not at least I tried.
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Personally I hope he gets all 36k's worth of tickets...
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It's not churlish to object to a company abusing a position of dominance and behaving anti-competitively. I'd have no objection to Visa claiming a monopoly on advertising at the venues, but to secure extra business for themselves by excluding all other methods of payment is outrageous.
And Z, you can jump off the conclusion you jumped to. I did apply for tickets to two events, because this is something that's unlikely to occur here again in my lifetime and I'd like to see some of it. We had a government in the 1980s that told us public monopolies were a bad thing; its legacy is a lot of de facto private monopolies, so what have we gained?
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So in what way has this "monopoly" harmed you? Made your tickets dearer? prevented you from getting any? in what way have you been harmed or disadvantaged?
Or is it just general outrage?
At least you tried to get some tickets, I bet most of the moaners didnt.
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Too many other things to worry about to care. Mmm nice cup of coffee for me !
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I happen to have a Visa debit card because my bank recently issued me with one. But I don't use it online - if I can help it - because it doesn't have the anti-fraud facilities of my credit card from another provider. And if competition is supposed to be good, then anti-competitive behaviour (think Microsoft) hurts us all.
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As much as I dislike microsoft, its dominant power in one secotr has not harmed us in one jot.
It has in fact brought some order and standardisation to an area that needed it. It could be said that such adoption of a "standard" has benefitted world economies, work patterns and brought about the use of computers more quickly. Its certainly turned them into a commodity item that you and I can now buy for peanuts.
And as for Visa not having anti fraud capability, at least they dont argue and just pay up if there is the hint of internet fruad.
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>>At least you tried to get some tickets, I bet most of the moaners didnt.
I haven't applied for any tickets and I'm not moaning. Where does that leave me?
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Can't be unigue then if there are two of you........
Actually , make that three of us.
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>>If I set up a business pulling stunts like that I'd expect to be locked up for it.
Eh, I don't get that. An individual completes a form requesting a list of tickets.
The tickets for the first few events are allocated and your card is charged.
The tickets for the next few events are allocated and your card is charged again.
I am completely unable to work out what people are complaining about. (I'm also moaning that I didn't think of applying for tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies as they'd have made my London B&B-with-tickets worth rather a lot...)
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Having thought about it a bit, I'm wrong regarding the double withdrawal, and I think I know why: according to the free link from the grim reaper thread I died two years ago.
Either that, or it's the joy of night shifts.
I till think not knowing what tickets you've got is a bit rum though.
Last edited by: AnotherJohnH on Wed 18 May 11 at 04:02
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Now that I agree with, there is no reason why you can not be notified with the ticket details at the same time the money is withdrawn.
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>> Now that I agree with, there is no reason why you can not be notified
>> with the ticket details at the same time the money is withdrawn.
Indeed. The problem is the timing. As you can bet your bottom dollar that if a customer had applied for 25k of tickets, and only been awarded 10 seats in the second round of the womens weightlifting and they told him this BEFORE charging his account, many people would be cancelling their credit cards.
So the information can only be released after the ballot.
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>> Indeed. The problem is the timing. As you can bet your bottom dollar that if
>> a customer had applied for 25k of tickets, and only been awarded 10 seats in
>> the second round of the womens weightlifting and they told him this BEFORE charging his
>> account, many people would be cancelling their credit cards.
Yes the timing is crucial, but I think you have it the wrong way round - If I apply for £25k of tickets, and I get ALL them, I am going to say, "Crikey I cant afford that" and cancelling my credit card.
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No... if you'd applied for loads of tickets, envisaging spending a fortnight in London, and only got one set of tickets to a minor event - then you might want to cancel your entire trip.
Anybody who ordered 25k-worth of tickets without the money to pay for them will get what they deserve.
I agree with those who think the system could, perhaps, have allocated you a max of 2k of your 25k of tickets, but cannot quite imagine a fair system.
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Well until LOCOG tell us why they did it the way they did, neither of us will know.
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They are supposed to start taking money this week.
Has anyone seen any activity on their Visa account indicating that they have actually been allocated some tickets? None showing on mine.
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I've just been notified I've got 55,000 tickets for West Ham vs Leyton Orient
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We be watching the games on the telly with that Nescafe sheisse mein got.!
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...I've just been notified I've got 55,000 tickets for West Ham vs Leyton Orient...
You're lucky, someone will get West Ham v Doncaster.
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Olympic tickets - WillDeBeest
