Feed Sign in with OpenID OpenID

Simon Willison’s Weblog

Glastonbury screw-up

I went last year, I went the year before, I’m pretty sure I went the year before that, but this year I’m staying home. The muppets running the online ordering system apparently decided that a couple of Windows 2000 servers could handle 130,000 ticket sales in 24 hours. They got hit by 2,000,000 hits in the first five minutes. Admitedly, that’s going to be tough for anything to handle (maybe it’s a job for Google’s super-platform) but after last year’s 23 hour sell out anyone could have told them this year was going to be a whole lot tougher.

This BBC article has plenty of stories that match my own. I tried persistently over the space of 12 hours, filled out the form multiple times, was repeatedly told the tickets were all sold out when I knew that they weren’t and finally received a screen telling me I’d made it. The confirmation email never turned up. Bloody marvelous.

I just hope they sort out a sane way of distributing the tickets for next year.

Posted 6th April 2004 at 3:02 am

This is Glastonbury screw-up by Simon Willison, posted on 6th April 2004.

View blog reactions

Next: Missed opportunity

Previous: What is Google?

17 comments

  1. Sorry to hear that mate. I got no sleep at all - trying constantly on a mobile and land line and the web (had 10+ firefox tabs trying to get in). Eventually I managed to get hold of a URL to a server behind their load balancer which got me in, and luckily for me the confirmation email turned up. It might be worth phoning them up - if you did get a sales confirmation page but no email, its possible you typed your email in wrong or something - although thats assuming you can get through to them!

    Sam Newman - 6th April 2004 09:35 - #

  2. Yeah, a guy I know spent the whole of last Thursday counting down the hours/minutes til tickets went on sale and then spent 9 hours continually pressing refresh in 4 separate browser windows at the same time as continually pressing redial on his phone. Apparently someone was also putting out the line that because fewer outlets (ie, one) were issuing tickets they'd hang around much longer allowing more people of a chance to get hold of them....

    Elly - 6th April 2004 09:44 - #

  3. I don't think you can complain. Many many people couldn't get tickets this year, last year or the year before that, so going 3 years in a row is just greedy. Indeed I believe Michael Eavis is thinking of setting up some policy where you can only go once every two years.

    Smiler - 6th April 2004 10:33 - #

  4. I had similar woes trying to get V-Festival tickets, in order to see the Pixies. While it wasn't a 23-hour sell-out or anything, from 9:00am onwards the phones and various *extremely badly written* web-sites - all run by one company - were basically unavailable. ASP Errors etc. etc.

    Why aren't these people? Hiring the Chris DiBona's of the world to make sure that their systems can actually *sell* their tickets to the *throngs of willing customers*?

    Aaron Brady - 6th April 2004 12:12 - #

  5. And why is there an extraneous question mark in my second paragraph. D'oh!

    Aaron Brady - 6th April 2004 12:13 - #

  6. I went through the same thing (although I did eventually get the confirmation). My friend didn't though, but he phoned up and they were able to confirm his booking from his postcode, so if you're worried I think that's the way to go.

    It wasn't so much the fact that the site was painfully slow, but that the error messages were so unhelpful. I had my own little rant about it here.

    It must have seriously damaged Aloud's business though; I can't see anyone who tried to book Glasto tickets through them ever using their website again, can you?

    Mark Bell - 6th April 2004 12:39 - #

  7. The problem is that aloud.com (also wayahead.com) have pretty much cornered the market as far as ticket sales in the UK go. If you want to buy tickets online for the most part you have no choice.

    When it does work, their buying process really sucks. I must buy around 20 tickets a year from them, and its very annoying that they ave no method for remembering you - I have to eneter all my details in every time I order

    Sam Newman - 6th April 2004 13:16 - #

  8. Smiler: The decent thing to do may well be to say "I went least year and had such a good time that I won't go again this year to give someone else a chance" - but let's face it, human nature sometimes just doesn't work like that. If Michael Eavis decides to encourage people to only go once every two years then I'll respect his request, but I think it's within my rights to feel burned by a first-come, first-served system when I came first and failed to get served.

    Simon Willison - 6th April 2004 18:52 - #

  9. Sorry to hear you had so much trouble. I've had similar problems with Ticketmaster in the past.

    I'm inclined to say you deserved the trouble, though, now that I've seen you use muppets as a derogatory term!

    Bernie Zimmermann - 7th April 2004 02:49 - #

  10. Hey, don't get me wrong - I love muppets! I just wouldn't trust them to run a web server.

    Seriously though, muppets is a very common derogatory term in the UK - it's not a slur against the muppets themselves. Heck, I've got one in my site header :)

    Simon Willison - 7th April 2004 03:25 - #

  11. "had 10+ firefox tabs trying to get in" and "9 hours continually pressing refresh in 4 separate browser windows"

    If this is an indication of the usuage pattern for the people trying to get tickets, is it any wounder their servers curled up and died?

    Still, Simon's right - they shouldnt have gone live with a system that couldnt cope, especially after being forwarned with last years problems.

    Richard@Home - 7th April 2004 09:14 - #

  12. "had 10 firefox tabs trying to get in and 9 hours continually pressing refresh in 4 separate browser windows" Hmm, i htink with that condition, it's will make user annoyed.

    Wahyu Wijanarko - 7th April 2004 12:24 - #

  13. I'm inclined to say you deserved the trouble, though, now that I've seen you use muppets as a derogatory term!

    It's official, google confirms that aloud.com are muppets.

    jgraham - 7th April 2004 16:33 - #

  14. "Hey, don't get me wrong - I love muppets! I just wouldn't trust them to run a web server."

    Okay, you're forgiven. I probably wouldn't want someone like Animal running my web server either.

    I would let the critics run my spam filter, though.

    Bernie Zimmermann - 8th April 2004 22:13 - #

  15. Try this link Glastonbury site confirms a small number of tickets have been reissued due to duplicates.

    Tom - 15th April 2004 17:51 - #

  16. It's official, google confirms that aloud.com are muppets.

    windflash - 14th June 2004 15:04 - #

  17. good

    windflash - 14th June 2004 15:07 - #

Comments are closed.

Previously hosted at http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2004/04/06/screwup

A django site