AusLeisure

Massive demand for the Good Things music festival that will take place in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in early December saw the event’s Oztix hosted website struggle to cope with demand yesterday, with prospective ticket buyers being charged multiple times as the website crashed.

With tickets for the rock, punk and emo music festival going on sale at 10am yesterday, fans purchasing their tickets experienced the site crashing repeatedly as they made their purchases.

Receiving no email or text acknowledgement as to whether their purchase had been successful, fans then repeated the process, only for have the site crash repeatedly.

As of late yesterday, buyers then received communications from Oztix advising them of multiple purchases, with money taken for each of the tickets.

Australasian Leisure Management Client and Partner Relations Manager, James Croll experienced this first hand, with his credit card charged in excess of $1200 for the purchase of six tickets when he had only been seeking one.

Croll’s multiple payments were experienced by multiple other would be festivalgoers, finding Oztix had taken their money.

Unhappy clients took to social media to express their anger and frustration, with one person showing that they had been charged $1,400 - showing a picture of the transaction in her bank account for tickets.

Another wrote “Oztix is the worst. Tried ordering Good Things festival tickets and got told over 8 times that the transaction timed out and failed. So I kept trying.

“Just checked my account and all the money is coming out, but still no confirmation or tickets. So do I have 0 tickets or 16?”

Another advised that a hold had been put on her account for all the failed ticket buying attempts.

Later yesterday evening a Good Things branded communication from Oztix advised "Good Things Festival would like to acknowledge the issues surrounding our presale this morning.

“Oztix our ticketing partner apologise unreservedly to all fans affected.

“We are absolutely blown away by the demand for our festival and can't wait to see you all in the pit in December

“We acknowledge that there most likely was an issue with you processing your payment.

“We've rectified this immediately by refunding the duplicate charges and these will be back in your bank account shortly.”

The company also took to Facebook to respond to customer concern, promising frustrated Oztix users they would be refunded for any duplicate tickets bought as a result of the error.

Among a total of 17 emails received, Croll did get an email confirming the purchase of one ticket. However, shortly afterwards Croll received links to six tickets via six separate texts leaving him, no doubt like numerous other purchasers, at a loss as to which of the tickets is valid and which are void and due to be refunded.

In addition, he has yet to receive the promised refund.

Oztix later blamed “unprecedented demand” for the crash, releasing a statement that advised “while this is exciting in many ways, there were some technical difficulties. The ticketing system functioned as expected, however the processing of payments saw major delays in response time between the system, payment gateway, banks and back again.

“This delay in receiving a confirmation from the bank meant that some customers had multiple attempts at buying tickets and were charged multiple times. All of the order receipts are currently being sent to customers and any customer who has multiple orders will be refunded this afternoon and receive an refund receipt.”

Oztix also confirmed those who had been charged would eventually be sent their tickets, adding “if you have been charged more than once, you will be refunded. We will advise once this process is complete and if you have any further queries at that time, then please contact us and we will assist you.”

Images: Promotion for the Good Things music festival (top) and communications sent by Oztix acknowledging issues with the ticket sales (middle and below).

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