Tattoo says sorry to customers after ticket website crashes

THE producer of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo has apologised, after the website for ticket sales crashed within hours of being launched.

Brigadier David Allfrey said the online booking system had been taken offline late on Thursday evening after technical problems with the site, which had gone live on Thursday morning.

He told would-be customers: “The Tattoo’s online booking facility is currently offline. I am sorry.

“Regrettably, the technical arrangements have been compromised and as a consequence many of you have been inconvenienced, being unable to access the ticket office as easily as I would have wished. We are very conscious that our customers in other time zones have found this particularly frustrating.”

Yesterday, the Facebook site for the Tattoo was inundated with complaints from customers trying to book their tickets for the Tattoo to mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year.

Marketing manager Alan Smith said: “We are doing all that we can to help customers but we are in the hands of our IT people, who are working flat out to solve the problem. We do appreciate how frustrating it is.”

The 2012 Tattoo runs from 3 to 25 August, with 25 performances, for which 217,000 tickets will be available. Last year’s Tattoo sold out by early August.