Around 200 people who thought their only experience of the London 2012 Olympic Games would be minor heats of synchronised swimming have received an unexpected upgrade to the men’s 100m final following an embarrassing ticketing mistake.
The London 2012 organising committee (Locog) confirmed on Wednesday that a decidedly unsynchronised error in its ticketing process had led to four synchronised swimming sessions being oversold by 10,000 tickets.
Locog and its ticket agent Ticketmaster spent the Christmas period contacting ticket holders and offering them alternatives, starting with tickets for sports they had applied for but been unsuccessful.
The upgrades have come at no additional cost, with Locog not charging for any discrepancy between the synchronised swimming tickets and the alternatives on offer. It has also offered to repay any discrepancy if the new tickets cost less than the originals.
Locog said the replacement tickets would come from a stock of unsold seats across the Olympic Games and that it was doing all it could to make good the error to fans who bought tickets in good faith.
Locog said the error occurred in the summer, between the first and second round of ticket sales, when a member of staff made a single keystroke mistake and entered ‘20,000’ into a spreadsheet rather than the correct figure of 10,000 remaining tickets. The error was discovered when Locog reconciled the number of tickets sold against the final layouts and seating configurations for venues, and began contacting ticket holders before Christmas.
Thousands of ticketholders have already struck lucky, upgrading to tickets for major events including swimming and athletics finals, and in around 200 cases the hottest ticket of all, the men’s 100m final.
Locog said the decision to award 100m final tickets was taken because one of the synchronised swimming sessions was on the same afternoon as the event, August 5.
约200人本以为2012伦敦奥运会他们只能看看花样游泳，稍微感受一下奥运热度，但是由于一个尴尬的售票错误，让他们意外获得观看男子100米短跑决赛的机会。
2012伦敦奥组委于周三证实，售票过程中一个明显不同步的错误导致了4场花样游泳赛事门票超额预订10000张。
伦敦奥组委及其票务代理机构Ticketmaster在圣诞节联系失误门票持有者，向他们提供其他选择，第一个备选就是那些他们曾申请过但没能申请到的赛事门票。
门票升级不需要额外花费，伦敦奥组委不收取花样游泳门票和备选门票的差价。如果新门票比原来的更便宜，伦敦奥组委还会返还差价。
伦敦奥组委称这些替换门票来自于奥运会各场赛事未售出的一些座位，他们尽最大努力补偿那些诚意购买门票的粉丝。
伦敦奥组委称这个失误发生在夏天的第一和第二轮门票销售中，一名工作人员犯了一个键盘输入错误，在电子表格中输入了20000而不是正确的剩余门票数10000。这一错误是在伦敦奥组委核对已卖票数和最终场馆布局及座位安排的时候被发现的，圣诞节前他们就开始和门票持有者联系。
成千上万的门票持有者碰上了好运，他们把门票升级为游泳和田径决赛等大型赛事的门票，约200人得到了最火的赛事门票——男子100米决赛门票。
伦敦奥组委称提供8月5日的100米决赛门票，是因为出错门票涉及的一场花样游泳赛事在同一天下午举行。
synchronised swimming: 花样游泳
make good: 补偿
in good faith: 诚心诚意地，善意地
struck lucky: 交好运
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