Cathay Pacific Rugby 7s Tickets Fail
Posted by SpikeJan 22
Maybe it’s because I live in Sai Kung and the fastest internet connection available here is 8mbps, while those living in most parts of HK island or Kowloon can get 100mbps and even 1 gig.
But I think it’s also the fault of HKTicketing for not beefing up their infrastructure for what they knew in advance would be a record breaking drain on their servers and bandwidth. Because every year when 7s tickets go on sale, everyone goes nuts trying to buy them and they sell out in under half an hour.
I actually got through on the web site. I got to the page, selected two tickets, logged in, clicked on “proceed to payment” and that’s when things hung. And the page wouldn’t load, giving me an error message. And I’d hit reload. And click on “proceed to payment.” And the page wouldn’t load. Repeat. Repeat. Until the page did load, telling me that my time to complete the purchase had expired and I should try again.
And so on and so on and so on until the page loaded and told me that there were no seats available. That was in Chrome. Over in IE, the Proceed to Payment page is still trying to load 10 minutes after I clicked on it.
It ain’t the end of the world. And there will be tons of tickets being scalped on AsiaXpat and GeoExpat and everywhere else.
It’s just fucking annoying that every year it’s the same goddamn thing and they never get their act together on this – because they don’t have to because it sells out anyway.
10 comments
Comment by Mac Dy on January 22, 2011 at 2:52 pm
8mbps?! Damn that’s fast. Here in manila we are promised up to 1 whole mbps but regularly get just measly KB’s. Btw, you know of anyway for me to get a temp post paid mobile+data for 3 days in HK? 7-11, perhaps? TIA
Comment by Spike on January 22, 2011 at 7:01 pm
And that’s one reason I haven’t moved to Manila; I’m well aware of internet speeds there. In HK, if you live in the right spot, you can get 1 gbps for about US$25 per month. All the convenience shops here sell pre-paid sim cards.
Comment by mumphLT on January 22, 2011 at 7:49 pm
Likewise we were trying to get tickets today and BB couldn’t get through to the web site.
So as usual it’ll be dealing with touts (last year they seemed to be imported from Scouseland and Bulgaria / Albania), begging off mates and trying to find generous souls that don’t want to attend every single day.
Comment by Mac on January 23, 2011 at 11:51 am
Thanks for the info, Spike.
US25?! dang with my speeds I’m paying US44-well, that’s customer satisfaction.
Comment by Peter from Bar 109 on January 23, 2011 at 11:51 am
Spike, the issue is with the HK Rugby Union. They take the easy option, sell through the worlds most useless service provider and “we” are OK because we have done our job – wankers.
5K tickets for public sale is also a fucking joke in HK when they know the demand is so much higher. Having been for many years the stadium in never full. All I ever see is young drunk arse wipes with CORPORATE tickets running around and being stupid….because that is where the tickets go.
I hate the HK RFU because they do not give a shit and then abdicate responsibility by allowing scalpers sell outside the ground …..
They are real FUCKERS…sorry to vent on your site but this is an annual event and the HKRFU does not give a shit about any one in HK.
Peter
Comment by gweipo on January 23, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Did you try ringing? i’ve found sometimes when I can’t get online to HK Ticketing, due to demand for a popular event and I just ring their phone number I not only get through but also get the tickets I want…
Comment by Spike on January 24, 2011 at 8:23 am
Yes, hitting the redial button nonstop, no luck.
Comment by Longtimenosee on January 24, 2011 at 10:44 am
Peter from bar 109, I agree with you about the tickmaster thing. It’s BS.
I would prefer a good old queue, but how to avoid the long line of secretaries and maids? Not sure.
There used to be a system where you had to watch a day of local rugby at the stadium while you waited for your tickets to be issued. I liked that very much, but sadly it was largely a crowd of those secretaries and maids again…
I also agree that there is too much of the stadium handed over to corp boxes though, but even then…that money raised is plowed back into developing the game here in HK. It has paid for the rebuild of King’s Park for example.
As for touts. 100% agree. I think they should be banned from every being allowed to come back to HK frankly.
However, I don’t agree about the HKRFU comments. The vast majority of tickets go to the HK rugby community that take part all year round. Not just on this one weekend per year.
In my particular team you can only get two tickets based on
-How long you have been with the club
-How much you have contributed of your time to the club in that year, and in the past.
-And if you have paid all our subs to the various parts of the club that you are involved with.
That is roughly the same for most clubs, and I am now glad to see that people who hold a number of club memberships just for the tickets, and do nothing to contribute…Well, they are finding that the growth in HK Rugby has removed their supply.
It is not perfect, but I would say that the ticket allocation in terms of numbers is about right, but that the use of ticket master is total crap.
Comment by Lampkin on January 24, 2011 at 11:58 am
I managed, finally after about an hour, to get 2 tickets.
We were literally re-dialing constantly on 3 phones and had 4 browser windows open on the shitty HKticketing website on two computers. Finally managed to book it on the website (on another attempt I actually put in my credit card details, clicked to confirm the payment, then… “sorry your session has expired”).
The HKticketing website is truly, bloody awful.
Comment by Friend of Casey on January 24, 2011 at 5:11 pm
I must be one of the lucky ones as I got through on a 6M ADSL line, first time, no hanging, at 10.20am.