Maybe VANOC Will Run The Games Better Than The Technology.
VANOC blows it again with their last chance, online Olympic ticket ordering scheme. Saturday was the day for those brave enough to fork over huge amounts of money to see Latvia play Poland in hockey, or maybe a luge event. The claim was 100,000 tickets would be available.
The online ticket system broke down on November 7th, leaving over a hundred thousand people frustrated, so they decided to push it a week and get things fixed. The concept of a waiting room was employed, so that the ordering system wouldn’t crash with the anticipated 150,000 visitors.
Things didn’t go well - although not quiet an epic fail, enraged Internet buyers spent the day waiting in a virtual waiting room for tickets.
Some of the better comments:
I waited for about 25 minutes in the Virtual Waiting Room, got in, logged on and the site crashed! I went to search for the event I wanted and the page never came up. I know it’s not my internet connection because I opened another window just to make sure. I tried several different events too, and the same thing happend. After a while I hit “refresh” and the page just went blank and stayed that way. I had to give up because I have places to be, but I’m hoping there will be another opportunity if this happend to everyone and not just me
got in and then the site didn’t work – 5.5 hrs
How can VANOC possibly report it went smooth?????? absolute rubbish. I signed in at 10h00 to the virtual waiting room . At 10 to 6 p.m tonight , I got into the site. Yes, some 7 and half hours later. So few events left, I got nothiing. Don’t publish it went smooth. Nothing in the lotto, nothing inthe second round, and Nothing in the fiasco today. So much for being a local who cannot enjoy some of the events. So much for Vancouverites being allowed access to the games in our own city! Pathetic! You shouold be ashamed VANOC
I got on after six hours but the site froze.. so now I am back to square one.
So, if you want to come to Vancouver and need some tickets, there’s always Craigslist. Or, you can try again with VANOC’s official scalper site.
“Our plan is to have our own valid resale sight so we can guarantee the tickets sold on our site are valid,” Denton said.
He said Vanoc would not be “policing” Craigslist for people selling tickets over face value and, in fact, Vanoc is “leaning to allow people to resell above face value” on its website.
“The purpose is full venues. We’ve seen in past Olympics seats go unused and it’s not as good an atmosphere for the athletes and fans,” Denton said.
Asked if Vanoc would profit from the re-sales Denton said any charge would re-coup the costs of designing the site and configuring its security.
“Our plan is certainly not to profit. There’s a lot of time and money spent to develop it. If we ended up breaking even I think we’d be pretty happy.”
Let the games begin.
photo credit: bensonkua Vancouver Limousine
