Shameful Gold Coast Commonwealth Games ticket fiasco
The Gold Coast Commonwealth Games has shined an international spotlight on Queensland and unfortunately, the pressure was too much with thousands of tickets being sent out with errors.
Yesterday, confused ticket holders raised the alarm online. Opening ceremony tickets stated the correct date, April 4, but said it was on Thursday instead of Wednesday.
"If you're going to stuff up I suppose you've got to do it on a grand scale!" Brisbane architect Tanya Mathers said.
Tanya received her ticket in the mail earlier this week.
"[You] kind of giggle 'cause you really feel sorry for the poor person that checked off on these."
Tanya was one of 14,000 domestic and international spectators who received the incorrect tickets.
However, the error didn’t end there.
Gold Coast resident James Lindner received his tickets for the triathlon and noticed the date was right, but the time was wrong.
"It said the event started at 9.30 pm at night which was a bit of shock, I wasn't expecting that because it was due to be a morning event," he said.
Ticketek has taken full responsibly for the errors, saying it was due to “human error”.
Minister for the Commonwealth Games Kate Jones apologised for the fiasco, saying “it’s not good enough”.
GOLDOC chairman Peter Beattie played down the situation, telling the media this morning that it wasn’t a big issue.
"This is one of those little things that’s gone wrong" he said. "Sometimes we just overreact to this stuff and get carried away."
Ms Jones confirmed that this was Ticketek’s biggest ever gig.
Ticketek will reissue all the tickets that have the wrong time but won’t do anything to the tickets for the opening ceremony that have the wrong day.
The opening ceremony tickets will be valid on April 4.
Are you going to the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games? Let us know in the comments below.
Image credit: Nine News