Hundreds charged twice for tickets to Olympics

ABOUT 700 people have been charged twice for tickets for the Olympic Games due to a "processing error".

The customers, who had been allocated tickets in the first phase of the "second chance" sale for the London 2012 Games, found the payment had been taken from their bank accounts a second time.

Ticketmaster, the company behind the Olympic ticketing process, said it had tracked down all affected customers and had refunded the money.

The firm was alerted by a customer who noticed the extra cash had been taken. "We are aware of a Ticketmaster processing error affecting a small number of customers who purchased tickets during the London 2012 Olympic Games second chance ticketing process," said a spokesman for the firm. "This resulted in recent payment for tickets being processed in error twice on 6 July, 2011.

"As soon as this issue was identified, a credit was actioned immediately to fully refund the second payment into the same account, which customers will see on their card statements. We would like to offer our apologies for this error and any inconvenience caused."

A total of 750,000 tickets were sold to 150,000 applicants in the round of sales - which was only open to people who had not been lucky enough to be allocated any tickets in the initial process. A further "second chance" round opened last week, for people who had won tickets the first time round, but had not got as many as they wanted. It will run until 17 July.

Only football - of which eight matches will be played in Glasgow's Hampden Park - and freestyle wrestling remain. All other sports are sold out.

The Olympic ticketing system has come under fire from consumers who were charged for tickets before they knew which sport their seats were for.

Those who applied in the second round also faced technological problems when they went online to apply - when some were sent "try again later" messages, even after being told that their payment had gone through.

Fewer than half of sports fans who applied got tickets in the first round, as popular events such as the men's 100m athletics final attracted more than one million applications.