I am appalled and upset by the experience I have had today booking tickets.
To cut a very long story short, I logged on 8 am and was put in the waiting room, where I waited. For half an hour. In the meantime I was exchanging emails with friends who were crashing out of the site. At half eight I started getting Page Load Errors, so I spent quarter of an hour manually refreshing the page fruitlessly. I went away from the PC for 15 minutes and tried refreshing again, in vain. I then had to go out, to work. I tried a few times during the day. Most of the time I just went to an error reporting page, sometimes I got in the waiting room but as soon as the page auto-refreshed it went to the Error Reporting Page. That may be because of reduced functionality at work - our system is certified by CESG as being secure enough for the Government Secure Intranet. In any case, I go to work to work, which is why I allowed myself an hour to get booked.
I returned home and logged on just after 7. I still had to wait in the waiting room (despite having received an email saying - it's a lot quieter now you shouldn't need be in the waiting room). Each time I clicked on the buy this link I was unlogged. I concluded this was because I was using Mozilla Firefox, and reluctantly I switched to IE 7, which I hate. I finally got somewhere, where - up a blind alley. I am particularly upset that the Evening with Rolando Villazon is sold out - that was the main reason I went on the site at 8am. I checked two dates for Flying Ductchman, to find there was nothing available between £14 and £160 (and the £14 or under were either very restricted view or standing).
Beggars Opera, sold out. All my other selections, a choice between really dismal or really expensive seats. Final result at 1940 hours, nothing.
I accept that when it comes to finite resources, it's a bit of a lottery; I have often accepted that by waiting until the evening I have to settle for less than ideal. I accept that certain things will be tremendously popular. I just feel very aggrieved that having made the effort to log on a minute or two before eight, I have lost out to people who may not even have tried until lunchtime.
I would like to think I may stand a chance of decent tickets when public booking opens, but I don't pay my Friends fee in order to take my chance with casual users. As that doesn't open until 10 am, I won't be able to do it from home without taking time off - which will be difficult to swing anyway, because of meetings that are set up.
We seem to have been here before and the problems were resolved, but rather than stick with something that seemed to be working, it seems that some clever-clogs has turned it into a system that can't cope.
I realise that I am not alone in complaining - I am a member of London Opera Community Yahoo Group, and several friends have had prompt and pleasant apologies. But I am upset, and stressed, and I just want to scream 'it's not fair!', because I did the best I could, I was there on site when it opened, and I gave it an hour, on a work day.
Yours sincerely
