PAGING NICKY CAMPBELL

Rob O'B emails us with a tale of Glastonbury ticket woes:

You seem fond of criticising the Glastonbury ticketing nonsense
(rightly so, I must say), so I thought I'd let you know about my
horrible afternoon.

I managed to get tickets in the first batch, however two of my friends
weren't so lucky, and after the Glasto organisers insisted that there
definitely wouldn't be any more tickets released, they were resigned
to missing out.

Jump to this afternoon, when we found out that there was a new batch
onsale. They were either unreachable or stuck on a bus, so I offered
to buy the tickets for them. Went through fine, got a confirmation
email, we're all made up, etc...

Then, when looking at the eFestivals forum, I find out that because
i'd used the same debit card for both orders (even though the four
ticket holders were all under different addresses), the second lot
would be cancelled. Phoned Aloud to check, and they confirmed it, even
after i'd offered to use a different card. I told the operator that I
was going to go and cry and he laughed at me. By that point all of the
resales had gone.

There's no specific mention made in the terms and conditions regarding
multiple transactions on one debit card (it just makes a rather vague
mention of 'one pair of tickets per person), so we're a bit gutted.
I'm still pleased that i'll be able to go, but feel really sorry for
my friends. I can sort-of understand why the debit card thing is in
place (for touts and that), but the way these tickets have been
released, murky t&cs and restrictive post-confirmation processing mean
that it's a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Given that Watchdog isn't on air at the moment, I thought i'd moan
about it to you. Anyway, keep up the good work.

From our non-Watchdog perspective (we never really took to the post Hugh Scully changes) we'd say the not-entirely-helpful attitude of the Aloud bloke stinks more than a little, too. The sudden appearance of these "extra tickets" - which we guess were the ones taken off people on a semi-capricious whim - is a bit off; and then to lose them on the basis of a rule that makes no sense in the first place (TWO tickets per debit card? How would the Eavises feel if, say, they could only pay for two covers per debit card at a restaurant? Probably, we'd imagine, a bit ticked off at such an impractical suggestion.) Sorry you didn't get your tix, Rob...

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