Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail • Hacker News Board

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#21

Post by FuzzyDunlop » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 1:19 PM UTC

kevinprince wrote: post #11

Ticketing is just plain hard and anyone who disagrees is just wrong. The site is getting a few hundred thousands users a day right now trying to ger a few thousand tickets mostly between 7pm and 10pm. While I agree LOGOC could of got a lot of the copy and menus better, trying to display "real-time" availability and keeping ticket sales fair is very very hard and Ticketmaster are doing a fairly decent job.

Of course, in the UK we don't have much choice other than Ticketmaster and SeeTickets. While there are alternatives for the smaller events, I think there's a chance the whole system could be disrupted.

The problem would be a lot easier to solve if you change the culture of releasing all your tickets at 9am, inviting hundreds of thousands of people to hammer your site all at once, at that specific time.

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#22

Post by ollysb » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 1:21 PM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #15

While people who try to make the process easier are being arrested > London's Metropolitan Police said they had arrested 16 people since Friday for illegal reselling of Olympics tickets And then everyone is shocked by the empty seats. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/timworstall/100019212/o...

I had tickets for the olympics and was unable to attend. I tried over several days to try and get the tickets reallocated, I wasn't even interested in getting any money for them, just wanted them to be used by someone else. Supposedly this can be done from the website but the expected link was replaced by a message saying my tickets were ineligible for resale. I then tried to phone customer support to see if there was any other way to let other people use the tickets (you have to have your name on the tickets so you can't just give them to family or friends). After hearing a recorded message I was then told that the call would now be disconnected. I then tried to phone the sales line, this time I managed to speak to someone but they told me that I needed to phone the customer support number to do anything about the tickets. When I told them that the line was just a recorded message they told me that the customer support line would disconnect if it was too busy... After several failed attempts to call the support line the event went ahead with 2 empty seats. Watching the coverage on tv it appeared that I was far from being the only person that had these problems...

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#23

Post by Jgrubb » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 1:26 PM UTC

As a native Atlantan who was 18 during the 1996 games, I recall tickets being absolutely easy to get (many for below face value) pretty much anywhere you went in the Olympic village area. If you don't care which event you get into, the easiest hack is to just go down there and buy them in person.

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#24

Post by bohrsatom » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 1:45 PM UTC

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #21

kevinprince wrote: post #11

Ticketing is just plain hard and anyone who disagrees is just wrong. The site is getting a few hundred thousands users a day right now trying to ger a few thousand tickets mostly between 7pm and 10pm. While I agree LOGOC could of got a lot of the copy and menus better, trying to display "real-time" availability and keeping ticket sales fair is very very hard and Ticketmaster are doing a fairly decent job.

Of course, in the UK we don't have much choice other than Ticketmaster and SeeTickets. While there are alternatives for the smaller events, I think there's a chance the whole system could be disrupted. The problem would be a lot easier to solve if you change the culture of releasing all your tickets at 9am, inviting hundreds of thousands of people to hammer your site all at once, at that specific time.

I think moving away from first come first served would also help, and the London 2012 ticketing process did give this a reasonable shot (although it could be argued with limited success, IMO because they didn't allocate enough seats in this fashion). It would be more straightforward for concert tickets where there are only 1 or 2 price bands for a small number of shows.

Something that was very successful but is rarely mentioned was the ticket resale process. Most people I know who returned tickets this way got their money back and it appears to have done a good job of reducing the size of the secondary ticket market.

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#25

Post by mistercow » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 2:06 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #5

It's common practice to make tickets hard to buy. You might think they would set the price high enough that the tickets barely sell out, but there are good reasons to allocate some tickets to enthusiastic non-wealthy people. They make better live audiences. This is why people stand in line overnight to get those Pink Floyd tickets. Ticketmaster seems to have built the digital equivalent.

Wouldn't letting the tickets sell out almost instantly achieve the same result? You'd sell only to those enthusiastic enough to sit there hitting the reload button until the exact moment when they become available.

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#26

Post by matthewowen » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 2:14 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #20

kevinprince wrote: post #11

Ticketing is just plain hard and anyone who disagrees is just wrong. The site is getting a few hundred thousands users a day right now trying to ger a few thousand tickets mostly between 7pm and 10pm. While I agree LOGOC could of got a lot of the copy and menus better, trying to display "real-time" availability and keeping ticket sales fair is very very hard and Ticketmaster are doing a fairly decent job.

No, ticketing is fairly easy. Fairly allocating a severely undersupplied stock of tickets without allowing the price mechanism to arbitrate is very hard. Thinking it's a technology problem, when it's an economics problem, doesn't make it any easier.

'Fairly allocating a severely undersupplied stock of tickets without allowing the price mechanism to arbitrate is very hard.'

This is part of ticketing. This is a challenge. So ticketing isn't easy.

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#27

Post by coob » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 2:15 PM UTC

Jgrubb wrote: post #23

As a native Atlantan who was 18 during the 1996 games, I recall tickets being absolutely easy to get (many for below face value) pretty much anywhere you went in the Olympic village area. If you don't care which event you get into, the easiest hack is to just go down there and buy them in person.

This is certainly not the case for London 2012. I was at the athletics on Friday evening, the park is rammed. There were a couple of touts on the walk from the stadium but only offering to purchase tickets rather than selling them. No tickets available at the box office.

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#28

Post by andrewingram » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 3:06 PM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #25

tlb wrote: post #5

It's common practice to make tickets hard to buy. You might think they would set the price high enough that the tickets barely sell out, but there are good reasons to allocate some tickets to enthusiastic non-wealthy people. They make better live audiences. This is why people stand in line overnight to get those Pink Floyd tickets. Ticketmaster seems to have built the digital equivalent.

Wouldn't letting the tickets sell out almost instantly achieve the same result? You'd sell only to those enthusiastic enough to sit there hitting the reload button until the exact moment when they become available.

But in the long run you end up creating the perception that the ONLY way to buy tickets is camping the website at availability time. Which I suspect would likely result in people just not bothering in the end.

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#29

Post by zeteo » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 3:10 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #5

It's common practice to make tickets hard to buy. You might think they would set the price high enough that the tickets barely sell out, but there are good reasons to allocate some tickets to enthusiastic non-wealthy people. They make better live audiences. This is why people stand in line overnight to get those Pink Floyd tickets. Ticketmaster seems to have built the digital equivalent.

I think "underpaid developers on tight schedule" is far more likely than "look, the specs said 'hard to buy', you need to put in two extra steps and a random wait!".

Re: Usability Hell: London 2012 Olympics Ticketing Fail

#30

Post by micheljansen » Sun, Aug 05, 2012, 3:14 PM UTC

Jgrubb wrote: post #23

As a native Atlantan who was 18 during the 1996 games, I recall tickets being absolutely easy to get (many for below face value) pretty much anywhere you went in the Olympic village area. If you don't care which event you get into, the easiest hack is to just go down there and buy them in person.

The London 2012 Olympic tickets are not for resale. The terms and conditions for the tickets dictate that they cannot be resold and any tickets that are resold are considered invalid. Of course they cannot possibly check that for all tickets, but so far it seems to work because I haven't seen anyone trying to resell tickets.