2012 Olympic website to relaunch, but you can't buy any tickets
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Your support makes all the difference.London 2012 will relaunch their Olympic ticket re-sale site this afternoon but the public will not be able to buy the newly available tickets until April.
The computer problems which saw the site suspended 11 days ago has led to organisers changing their plans.
Instead of the public being able to buy the tickets on a first-come, first-served basis when they become available, London 2012 will now buy back any unwanted tickets over the next two weeks from 3pm today and then sell them again from April.
Organisers will not confirm how the tickets will be re-sold until closer to the time.
LOCOG commercial director Chris Townsend said: "We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by the suspension of our ticketing resale platform.
"We made a commitment to our customers to give them a safe, secure and legal way of selling Olympic and Paralympic tickets which they are no longer able to use.
"We are delivering on that commitment, and will buy any tickets that customers are no longer able to use at face value until February 3.
"Every ticket we purchase from the public will be offered back to the public from April. We believe this system - purchasing the tickets back from customers now, and offering them again from April, will result in a better customer experience for everyone.
"Our main objective has always been to provide a platform for people to resell their tickets in a safe, secure and legal way. This is the right solution, at the right time given we also have test event tickets on sale currently."
The re-sale site failed to cope with demand on the first day it was launched and caused frustration to tens of thousands of people who tried to buy tickets that appeared to be available but had not been removed from the system.
Organisers asked Ticketmaster to come up with a solution but the new system will see re-sold tickets made available at the same time as the 1million 'contingency' tickets that will go on sale from April, rather than being sold to the public now - and risking another failure of the system.
A London 2012 spokeswoman said: "Our main objective has always been to provide a platform for people to resell their tickets in a safe, secure and legal way. This is the right solution, at the right time given we also have test event tickets on sale currently.
"The platform is there to help people resell tickets in a safe, secure and legal way, recognising that we asked people to commit a long time before the Games and that circumstances may change."
PA
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