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Transaction delays slow London Olympic ticket sales

From Eileen Hsieh, CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • People whose applications for Olympic tickets were accepted were to know by Tuesday
  • Some monetary transactions for the tickets did not go through, the organizer says
  • "The ticketing process does not officially finish until June 10," the committee says

London (CNN) -- People who were disappointed that their effort to buy tickets to the 2012 London Olympic Games was apparently unsuccessful should not despair. They could just be the victims of an electronic glitch.

Tuesday was supposed to be the last day for money to be drawn from successful ticket applicants' bank accounts, the first sign that they would be getting tickets. But the organizer was still working Wednesday on contacting applicants whose payment transactions did not to go through.

"The ticketing process does not officially finish until June 10," a representative of the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, or LOCOG, told CNN. "Therefore even if no money has been taken out of your account yet, it does not mean that you have failed to get any tickets."

A total of 6.6 million tickets for the 2012 London Olympics went on sale in March; 1.8 million people sent in applications for 20 million tickets.

Even those who know they have been allocated tickets will have to wait until up to June 24 before finding out which events they'll be attending.

"The interest greatly outweighed the number of tickets available," the LOCOG representative said. "There was always going to be a level of disappointment, but we believe our application process is the fairest way for people to have an equal chance at trying."

No one received preferential treatment in the computer selection process. Not even the mayor of the host city.

"I haven't succeeded in getting any tickets, but I'm resolute," London Mayor Boris Johnson told journalists on Wednesday. "I will reapply. I'll come back in July."

Applicants who failed to get tickets in the first round will have the chance in July to purchase any tickets that are still available. Those will most likely be for the less popular events.

"It makes you proud to be British," Johnson added. "You've got the mayor of the host city having to do exactly the same sort of thing as everybody. You might almost suspect LOCOG of deliberately depriving me of tickets in order to cheer up everyone else who's been disappointed."

On September 9, tickets for the 2012 London Paralympic Games will go on sale. In December, any unsold Olympic tickets will be made available to the general public.