On-line 'error' leads woman to clock up $4000 Mission bill

ROGER MORONEY
After more than three hours of on-line queuing yesterday, Napier woman Maria Lewis figured she had finally beaten a repetitive "error" response and got her four tickets to the 2008 Mission Estate Winery Concert.
And, as it transpired, she did.
But they came with 36 other tickets she did not want, as well as a staggering $4000 debit to her credit card.
The glitch, which Mrs Lewis suspected would have affected others who went on-line from noon yesterday in the rush for early tickets, was a repeat of similar multiple-booking problems promoters Queensland-based Sports and Entertainment Ltd (SEL) experienced last year.
An overloaded exchange-rate banking link between New Zealand and Australia was the culprit last year, and SEL was quick to ease people's fears about being stuck with a bill they did not want.
One of the first things Mrs Lewis did this morning was fire off a "please explain" e-mail to SEL.
She said discovering she had paid for 40 tickets and not four was bad enough, but it should have been impossible given SEL's imposed limit of just four tickets a person.
She went on-line to buy tickets for herself, her husband and two others.
"I kept getting an 'error' sign coming up so kept trying," she said.
She also alerted her mother-in-law that she was having problems so she went on-line and tried as well. Again, more "error" signals.
What they did not know was that every application they re-made was being accepted, with $400 being deducted from the credit card each time - 10 times.
"I would rather queue in the street for three hours to get them. Something goes wrong every year," she said. SEL has said it would put right any problems ticket buyers had encountered.
* The Mission Concert artist is expected to be announced in about a fortnight. Celine Dion and Simon and Garfunkel have been ruled out.