Vanoc puts off final phase of ticket sales until Nov. 14

Staff Reporter, The Province

Published: Saturday, November 07, 2009

VANCOUVER - Technical glitches forced Vancouver 2010's organizing committee on Saturday to delay the sale of Olympic tickets until November 14.

The third and final phase of ticket sales - which was to include much-coveted seats at the gold-medal hockey game and opening ceremonies - was put off Saturday when network problems shut down online and telephone sales.

Olympic Winter Games officials will be setting up a website for the resale of tickets and expect they may have to live with the notion of prices being higher than the original face value.

Sam Leung file

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The sale began at 10 a.m. but would-be buyers were quickly voicing their frustration at being shut out. "How could they not be ready for today's ticket sales? I've been trying since 10 a.m. and nothing is working," remarked one commenter on The Province's website. "Pathetic!"

Vanoc posted a news release on its site Saturday afternoon explaining that Tickets.com, the official ticket-service provider for the Games, had problems "with the configuration between the virtual waiting room and the ticketing transaction site."

"We are disappointed that people wanting to purchase tickets today did not receive the chance to do so - this is the first time we have had such an issue," said Caley Denton, vice president of ticketing for VANOC.

"Even though it appears the problem is close to being resolved, we made the decision to postpone the sale of Phase Three ticket sales for one week as our priority has always been to ensure fair access."

A few hundred tickets were sold successfully Saturday through the call centre, Denton said, but he promised the equivalent number of tickets sold for each event would be taken from the contingency pool and added to the November 14 sale.

© The Province License 2009