Olympic organisers are doing little to assuage buyers as the first round of debiting takes place. Have you had your allocation?
Is anyone else afraid to look at their bank balance now that the money for Olympic tickets is being debited? Many will share the sentiment of one internet forum user who applied for �2,900 worth: "I hope we don't get everything we asked for ... or even half that figure."
The internet is awash with rumours that, far from being madly oversubscribed, the allocation process will see most people get most of their tickets ? except for those �20.12 opening ceremony ones as rare as a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
Officially, about 1.8 million people made 20m applications for the 6.6m tickets on offer. But this hasn't stopped concern spreading among many buyers that they are going to be debited for far more than they first thought.
The Olympic organisers aren't exactly helping. We asked them what a typical applicant is going to get. Let's say the Smith family applied for �500 of tickets ? the amount organisers say is the average ? will they be seeing, say, �400 deducted from their account? Unfortunately we drew a blank.
All the organisers will say is that money will be taken from your account sometime between now and June 10. The rate of transactions going through this week will be slow ? a steady jog ? but turning into a sprint before long, and the organisers won't specify when that shift in gear will happen.
Critics say that organisers should email buyers before the money is debited, to let them fix their finances in advance. And it's not just the timing of the debiting that buyers are in the dark about. When the money finally comes out, buyers won't know precisely what it's for. They will only find out what tickets they have actually bought between now and June 24, say organisers.
If you don't have enough money in your account when the debit takes place, Visa (the Olympics' chosen partner) will try again immediately. If that doesn't work, the organisers will then contact you to try again on a specified date. If there's still not enough money in your account then it's Olympic Games over for you. It's a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy.
The transaction will be treated like any other. So you can't be partially debited up to the limit of your account. It's all or nothing. And if you bounce a debit, expect to be charged the normal fee by your bank. Expect a lot of griping from people about just how much money the banks going to make out of this.
But the biggest gripe will come from those who overordered but still get a full, or near-full, allocation of tickets. Were we conned by the organisers into over-subscribing?
After all, the official advice from the organisers before the application process began was: "To increase your chances of being successful, we recommend you apply for more than one or two sessions, and for a range of sports."
Some people who took that advice may now find themselves with tickets for taekwando or Greco-Roman wrestling they might find difficult to off-load on to friends.
There will be a platform for reselling tickets, but it won't be opened until next year at the earliest. Again, there's no official date as to when.
Twitter is full of people asking if you have had your allocation yet. And one of the most retweeted answers is: "Just got my Olympic ticket application back ... Missed out on the 100m final but ended up with 25,000 tickets for West Ham v Doncaster."
Despite the Olympic organisers insisting that the debiting process has begun, the media's hunt for applicants who have actually seen money come out of their account has thrown up few clues.
Have you had your allocation? Is your bank account now cleaned out? Do let us know, below.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2011/may/18/consumer-affairs-olympics-2012
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