100% agree! I have just withdrawn my application and resubmitted at drastically reduced requests as I cannot afford to risk ‘winning’ all of my application .. very sad, very disappointed … and now hoping that ‘on the day’ of an event, I will be able to stumble across some not too overpriced tickets for the events I really want to see. BTW – is there any way of getting reduced prices for children?

I agree 100% with what you’ve said Martin. It’s a stupid system that they’ve come up with, and the list of items you’re not allowed to take with you is draconian too!

I agree 100%. It’s an absolute disgrace the system that they have come up with. The list of items you can’t take to the olympics defies belief as well!

It’s a total joke. Martin made some very valid comments when he said it will favour those who are more affluent. Hardly the Olympic spirit but then that was lost eons ago. Those who have less disposable income haven’t got a cat in hell’s chance of getting tickets.

For certain events it looks like children can get “pay your age” tickets, so a 10 year old would pay £10 and a 15 year old would pay £15 etc.

http://www.tickets.london2012.com/olyschedule.html

Would be interested to know what’s your best money saving suggestion at how to purchase £1500 worth of tickets you’ve committed to next month when you plan to sell some of them on next year? 0%er ?

Certain events have reduced prices for children, they are shown with a kind of blue speech bubble next to them. For those events, children “pay their age” which is good. But note that any event with a final or medal ceremony is excluded from this, and I am not shelling out £50 per ticket for my little ones so that excludes a lot of people I reckon.

I just realised I don’t even have a Visa card anymore after Tesco “kindly” changed my one and only Visa card to a Mastercard without asking. I’ve had to use a Visa Debit card from my current account which I’m not too chuffed about. That means I’ve only been able to request the cheapest tickets just in case.

Completely agree the system is a difficult one to work with. I’ve over bid assuming because I can only afford the lower 2 price categories I will be lucky to get tickets for 1 or 2 of the 12 events I’m spread across. Lucky for me I have some savings to cover the spread. However if I got all the tickets there could be a problem buying groceries next month.

Oh, I agree so much. Just spent £800 on tickets, I really hope I only get about £100 worth as I just cannot afford it. There’s another big problem: I’m changing my address in four months, don’t know where to, and the system wouldn’t let me register my work address for delivery. This is really unhelpful.

I hope it’s really really oversubscribed and the lottery gods make my mind up and I just end up with a couple of tickets for the beach volleyball and the tennis. Do I really want to be successful with my hockey, basketball, handball tickets, or the two football matches which might be between Uzbekistan and Chad for all I know? I don’t even know the rules of hockey, baseball or handball. I only got them on the offchance that I don’t get my beach volleyball and tennis tickets and end up with nothing and feeling very bitter. I’d rather go to see a hockey match and be able to say I went to the Olympics. But I don’t want them if I do get the tickets I really want!

I also bought two things that clash: the tennis final, and an athletics ticket that includes the 100m final. If I get neither, it would be a bummer, but if I got both, I’d HAVE to sell one because the cardholder has to be one of the people attending and I can’t appear at both events. Which would mean having to sell one of them, even though I have friends who would bite my hand off for these tickets. It seems so wrong.

Agree totally! When I submitted my request, I realised that I’d forgotten to try for some football tickets (at least being played locally) and in order to add them on, you have to withdraw your whole order and then start again. I have tried to get on the site again, but the demand is so high that it’s not accessible. I assume I will be able to get tickets to the footie after the ballot, but nothing is certain. I’ve ended up bidding for about £500 of tickets and a large amount of that is for my (then to be) 8 year old. Grrrrr!

just used my dads card for the tickets spent a bit more then e would of liked hopping i dont get all the tickets as they are all spread out and to pay for a hotel to would cost alot big worries there! i dont like the set up at all it should be first there first choice! i also think should people in the UK have a priority over everyone else as its in London we should get the choice. cant wait hopping i get at least 1 of those tickets!

I agree completely, finally took the leap of faith tonight at last knockings with our expectant children who are SURE we’ll be successful! Oh and by the way the LONDON 2012 team have joined in with the discrimination for families of over 4 people, we had to cherry pick the sessions and events that would potentially allow us to attend as a family of 5.

Finally took the leap of faith at last knockings this evening after much pressure from our children and the decision to pay on our credit card particularly if we end up getting all three sessions we applied for!
Really fed up as well that not only are we supposed to be physic in choosing events with a chance of a place but also that the LONDON 2012 team have joined in the discrimination that often follows us as a family of 5 many of the sessions could only have 4 tickets requested, so this ruled out the opening and closing ceremonies even being on our ‘pick list’.

The method of allocating tickets is most unsatisfactory when you are trying to organise time and travel and don’t want to spend a week commuting to and from London for events dispersed on a variety of different days. There was no planner aid selection of events taking into account travel between locations, and while we spent time creating a programme, the lottery may mean that we have big gaps. It would have been nice if the bid process had included “link these events together” so that all or none were offered and a “maximum I can pay” so that when you budget is reached, no more tickets are alocated.

The method of allocating tickets is most unsatisfactory when you are trying to organise time and travel and don’t want to spend a week commuting to and from London for events dispersed on a variety of different days. There was no planner or assistant to support the selection of events over a day or two, and having created such a tool and selected what would be a nice programme, there was no way of locking the events as “all or nothing”. The lottery per event means we may end up with large gaps in our programme. A facility to set the “maximum total willing to pay”, “link events” and “link alternatives” would have been consumer friendly and allow the 2012 system to allocate events to a budget and programme, and hence sell more tickets. A win win situation.

I also agree 100% with Martins comments but we set a budget which we could afford should we be lucky enough to get all we asked for. I think it is crazy and irresponsible to bid for tickets you can’t afford “just in case” and goes against everything Martin endorses in the web page ie. do you need it and can you afford it??

There are 2 main sports I’d like to see but as they are far apart on the schedule it’s not financially possible. However If I knew which 1 main event I would be successfully allocated tickets then I could apply for other events around those dates.

Short answer – don’t go. You will be able to see it all on TV anyway and if you live or go to Weymouth, all you will see are tiny triangles in the far distance or else watch TV screens on the beach so you may as well stop at home.

Ticketmaster knows how many people have subscribed to which sessions. It would be a fairly easy thing in the world for them to slap a “high demand” icon on the oversubscribed events, or even better, a ratio of applications to available seats. This ratio could have been updated daily, to avoid too much processor time being used up, and been shown as “correct as of …”. Doing this would have given people some idea of the likelihood of the success of their application. If I get everything I asked for I’m a grand down, but I think it highly unlikely that anyone below the top 2 groups will get into the opening ceremony. Maybe I’ll get into Archery at Lords then. That’ll do .

I believe there is another slant to this which allows for the Olympic organisers to ensure that all venues are full. By setting up this kind of psychic ticket booking system they can then ensure that people are given tickets for the less interesting/popular spectator sports so that they can avoid a situation such as the Games in India recently where many of the stadiums were empty. Many people will not bother sending back the tickets and will attend anyway thus ensuring events have sufficient spectators to support on the day.

yep system could have done with being a bit more sophisticated – first come first served is no good either – you just end up with the system crashing. the olympics system is only marginally better than world cups at least you were able to,select the lower category as your preference but can go up to x price. world cup you had to choose high price and then say you would accept lower. Fact prices are so ridiculous is main problem. Also would have been good to get an idea of what kind of view the each category at each venue provides. I’m going to us in June and have bought some baseball and football tickets and when you select your seat the system shows you a photo of the view will have. Those with kids are the biggest losers wasnt our whole bid based on inspiring kids to experience the olympic spirit- so much for a legacy!. Visa only agreement is my biggest gripe same with mastercard for world cups we should have all just not bothered and just watched the marathon instead for free!

I know we are going to sound like total fools- but my husband and have stupidly completely over committed ourselves on tickets- we tried to edit and withdraw on 26th but the whole site was down- is there anyway of withdrawing now? Can we cancel our card or close our bank account prior to 10th May?

I am ashamed to be British. The ‘system’ is the worst I have come across. And they don’t have the honesty to tell you up front that you’ll have to pay £6 to have the tickets delivered. If it was my choice alone, I wouldn’t be giving them any money.

CHILDREN ‘pay their age’ i.e. a 6 year-old will pay £6

Children ‘pay their age’ i.e. 6 year old pays £6

Totally agree especially as this is already being heavily subsidised by Londoners and the taxpayer. It is all about having money a year in advance to pay for the buildings and organisation and to make Visa rich and to subsidise the fat cats on the IOC. My only Visa card was a Tesco one which was closed with a new card issued which I had not requested. Clever Tesco.

I am so glad that I don’t care about the London Olympics. Also, I live in Coventry, and our Ricoh Arena’s going to be renamed to the City Of Coventry Stadium for the duration. So, who’s going to compensate Ricoh UK and the city for any lost sponsorship revenue? Not Lord Coe and his pals.

It’s gonna be a big event to look for. I wish the pyschic booking is smooth and fair. Hope I could make it.

When I finally cut my ticket choice down to 1 event only as I couldn’t afford to risk hundreds of pounds I then have to pay 6.95 postage. The whole system is wrong. I’m a huge athletics fan and this is a once in a lifetime experience which I will be watching on TV. Very sad.

I think the only reason why only Visa is accepted is that Visa paid enough money for exclusive rights to handle the payment system – which of course, screws everyone in the world except for Visa.

I suppose you could make sure there is nothing in your account if it is a Visa debit card – but then you would lose all the tickets. If it’s a Visa credit card, I’d just close the account before the 16th – but then, you won’t get any tickets at all – unless you wait for the returns next year and try then. I’ve limited my application – so will probably end up with nothing anyway. It’s very difficult for people like me who live nowhere near London – if I do get tickets I could end up going up and down like a fiddler’s elbow – and at what extra cost! Well, there’s always the Big Screens, I suppose….. (sigh!)

Olympics is now a business not a sport and this tarnished its appeal as a spectacle many years ago. I’m not buying tickets and thus I’m not affected by the Visa monopoly but I do object to it. As a result, I’m putting all my personal spending on my Mastercard and not using Visa unless there is a consequential benefit to me. I hope that by doing this, the benefit that Visa gains from its monopoly will be diminished by loss of business in other areas. It’s a simple and effective way of sending a message and the more who do it and the longer we do it for, the more impact it will have. If you feel strongly about this then join me.

Does anyone know if you can re-sell tickets on say ebay if you do not have friends who can make it? I for instance have applied for 1500gbp of various ticket’s many in multiples of four. Does that mean the purchaser (me) HAS to attend all of these? There is no doubt that finals and opening / closing will be highly sort after, surely they will not make it illegal to sell on tickets privately?

Reselling will NOT be allowed and eBay have said that they will take down any listings for Olympics tickets. That being said, I don’t know if there will be any security (i.e. if you will be asked for ID to get in to check your name matches the name on the ticket). In other words, not sure there will be anything to stop you selling them to mates in yoru local pub.

Just managed to find an article from the Russian press about the list of items people won’t be allowed to take…Nothing on the “Official” Olympic site at all.  Some things may be for safety and security, they are worried that people will start throwing coins, for example, at the contestants…do they think anyone will have any money left after mortgaging the house to buy tickets, transport and accomodation, and then to add insult to injury having to pay for really “healthy” Maccy Ds and coca cola!!!  If this isn’t about the ‘few’ making huge wads of cash I don’t know what is….Very glad I can’t even afford to think about going. Grrrr site at all.  Some things may be for safety and security, they are worried that people will start throwing coins, for example, at the contestants…do they think anyone will have any money left after mortgaging the house to buy tickets, transport and accomodation, and then to add insult to injury having to pay for really “healthy” Maccy Ds and coca cola!!!  If this isn’t about the ‘few’ making huge wads of cash I don’t know what is….Very glad I can’t even afford to think about going. Grrrr

Mastercard had a monopoly on World Cup tickets for Germany in 2006, so they are no better.  I’m guessing they had the same for last year’s World Cup and may even have this in place for the Champions League as they sponsor this too.

Here we go again. I was logged in and selected my tickets at 6.00am, went into my basket and confirmation/payment system took 25 minutes to complete. I have have an email saying that I was un-successful on my application. How can this be a first come first server system?
Now I’ve missed out on the 2nd chance sell due to the completely inept ticketing system…