Thousands of people have run out of money after rushing to get tickets in advance for one of Australia’s biggest alternative music festivals.
Chaos has erupted online after a crazy rush to get festival tickets caused a hosting website to crash and left hopeless attendees without subscriptions despite paying them, some more than once.
Advance tickets for the Good Things rock, metal, punk and emo festival, which will be led by Bring Me The Horizon, which will take place in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in December, went on sale on Tuesday at 10am. in the morning.
Shortly afterwards, however, fans complained that the Oztix booking website had taken their money, but it crashed before it could confirm that tickets had been purchased correctly.
A large number of angry people quickly expressed their disappointment at the technical problem, and many were distressed at being charged up to seven times for tickets they weren’t even sure they had.
An angry customer claimed they had received almost $ 3,000.
“It seems to be a common practice with Oztix. My credit card has been charged seven times, I have not yet received any confirmation or tickets. I have no idea if I now have 0 tickets or 14 tickets.
“Oztix has turned off their phones and is not responding to emails and I have $ 2,800 in my pocket,” they wrote in a comment on the festival’s Facebook page.
“I couldn’t confirm the sale of tickets on the presale website. But I just found out that I’ve been charged several times on my card without any confirmation of purchase. Pretty terrible,” another annoyed person wrote.
“It looks like this is happening to many of us. Buying tickets for the Good Things Festival is running out, but it’s still taking our money. I guess that means we’ll get tickets in the mail or posted at some point. It was annoying, “said another.
“I tried for two hours to get tickets and the time went on. I didn’t know, they took money out of our bank account seven times and now I’m madly trying to somehow get it back … and there are no tickets yet. The organizers Are you aware of the website problem? ” said a third.
The company later turned to Facebook to respond to customer concerns on Tuesday afternoon, promising frustrated Oztix users that they would be reimbursed for duplicate tickets purchased as a result of the error.
“The Good Things Festival wants to acknowledge the problems surrounding our pre-sale this morning. Oztix, our ticketing partner, unreservedly apologizes to all affected fans. We are absolutely amazed by the demand for the our festival and we can’t wait to see them all in the grave in December, ”the company said in a statement.
Oztix blamed the “unprecedented demand” for the crash.
“While this is exciting in many ways, there were some technical difficulties. The ticket issuance system worked as expected, but payment processing resulted in significant delays in response time between the system. , the payment gateway, banks and vice versa.
“This delay in receiving confirmation from the bank meant that some customers had several attempts to purchase tickets and were charged several times. All order receipts are currently being sent to customers and any customer with multiple orders will be refunded this afternoon and you will receive a refund receipt “.
Oztix confirmed that those who had charged would eventually be sent their tickets.
“If you have been charged more than once, you will be refunded. We will advise you once this process is complete and if you have any further questions at this time, please contact us and we will help you, ”he said.
While many said they were triggered by the company’s use of the term “unprecedented” given how it was used during the Covid pandemic, others said the crash of its site was inexcusable. .
“Unprecedented should not be a word in OzTix’s apology vocabulary. Big, fast traffic should be the expectation for any event like this. Instant sales are not new, and with the proliferation of services like AWS , (where increased demand can be accommodated and satisfied with a proper escalation of resources), such things should never happen, “reads an answer.
“I’m sorry, but frankly, it’s not good enough. How many times will ticket sellers” underestimate “demand because they refuse to have the right servers online for important events?” Said another.
Others were more lenient and appreciated the explanation and work of the company to solve the problem.
“I’m waiting for my refund of the extra ticket order I didn’t need. Thank you for working on this so quickly,” one person said.
“Thanks for the update, I was having a heart attack for how many tickets I bought,” wrote another.