Ballot tickets for this year’s Falls Festival went on sale yesterday morning but fans attempting to secure their coveted multi-day passes to the annual New Years event ran into major issues with purchasing tickets online, flooding the festival’s social media with complaints as they were greeted with technical difficulties.
Some punters who had scored ballot access to 4 and 3 day passes for the festival – hosted in Lorne, Byron Bay, and Marion Bay – began taking to the Falls Festival Facebook page with confused messages about accessing Falls ticketing – hosted by OzTix – experiencing bugs on their browsers, such as their one-time use codes being met with error messages and difficulties finalising their transactions on the website.
In response to yesterday morning’s difficulties, Falls Festival issued the following statement from OzTix, blaming the high demand for the ticketing meltdown:
During the on sale this morning the demand was bigger than previous years, even though less ballot codes were distributed. 4 Day tickets were all in reservation almost immediately after 9am and 3 day not long after that. Some customers did receive an error message saying their code was invalid, instead of receiving the correct message that all tickets were in reservation.
There are still some 2 day tickets available for Lorne and a small allocation of all tickets will be available in the general public on sale, next Wednesday the 3rd September at 9am AEST. We also have tickets available to the Byron and Marion Bay events this summer here.
Oztix’s statement wasn’t enough for some unhappy punters however, frustrated at the response and further airing their grievances on social media while criticising the preparedness of the ticketing agency.
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“How does that even work? More demand when less ballot codes were distributed?” quizzed one Facebook commenter. “Did you not estimate the amount of tickets to put on sale today when everyone who entered the ballot stated how many tickets they wanted? Please just admit that you monumentally fucked up and do another ballot code sale where the unique codes actually work and every single 4 day tickets isn’t ‘reserved’ immediately.”
Their sentiments were echoed by other angry patrons. “If you are going to stuff up and have a crap system you could at least be truthful about the fact you screwed it up!” vented one commenter. While another writes, “the excuse that they were ‘in reservation almost immediately after 9am’ is a lie – the rest of us were able to get tickets both before AND after the person who had the code that said it was ‘incorrect’, and we were still able to buy 4 day tickets until around 9:30am.”
The incident has an unfortunate sense of déjà vu; the Falls Festival’s 2012 edition experienced similar ticketing issues with Oztix, with the organisers’ responses triggering a wave of negative responses from prospective festival-goers who had missed out on tickets.
The situation proves how increasingly popular the Falls Festival has become during its growing expansion in recent years. This year’s lineup features the international likes of Alt-J, Glass Animals, Röyksopp & Robyn, Run The Jewels, Todd Terje, and Australian artists like The Presets, John Butler Trio, DMA’s, Jagwar Ma, Vance Joy, and many more.
A second round Falls Festival 2014 lineup announcement is expected in the coming weeks. General ticket sales are open to the public at 9am, on Wednesday 3rd September.
Falls Festival 2014 Lineup
Alt-J
Big Freedia
The Black Lips
Bluejuice
Cold War Kids
DMA’s
Glass Animals
George Ezra
Jagwar Ma
Jamie XX
Joey Bada$$
John Butler Trio
Kim Churchill
The Kite String Tangle
Milky Chance
Movement
The Presets
Remi
Röyksopp & Robyn
Run The Jewels
Safia
SBTRKT
Spiderbait
Sticky Fingers
The Temper Trap
Tensnake
Tkay Maidza
Todd Terje (Live)
Tycho
Vance Joy
Wolf Alice
& more to be announced
Boogie Nights lineup
Alison Wonderland
Badbadnotgood
Client Liasion
Salt N Pepa
& more to be announced
Falls Festival 2014 Dates, Tickets
General tickets on sale 9am, Wednesday 3rd September from http://tickets.fallsfestival.com/
Marion Bay, TAS: December 29th, 2014 – December 31st, 2014
Byron Bay, NSW: December 30th, 2014 – January 02, 2015
Lorne, VIC: December 28th, 2013 – December 31st, 2014
