Splendour in the Grass went on sale yesterday morning at 9am, with music fans from around Australia jumping online to pay a hefty fee to see one of the best festival line ups ever presented in the country. Only problem is, most fans couldn’t buy tickets! In an unprecedented internet banking meltdown, fans couldn’t access the ticketing site, with organisers pleading with fans to use non-Westpac or St George Bank cards. (Yeah, like we all have multiple credit cards!). They told fans on Facebook “Just confirming that Westpac and St George credit cards CANNOT be used to purchase tickets due to the Westpac glitch. Transactions with these cards are being rejected and are holding up the sales process. Please use other cards. The payment gateway has now switched to another bank and sales should proceed more smoothly soon.”

Ultimately the event’s promoters were forced to suspend ticket sales for 12 ours from 9pm last night, saying by way of explanation in a press release:

“Numerous external technical issues, with both Westpac and the festival’s ticket outlet Moshtix, resulted in many people being unable to purchase tickets to the event for a number of hours after they went on sale this morning.

For the duration of the morning Westpac Credit and Debit cards and Westpac affiliated cards issued by Citibank, Suncorp, St George, Heritage Building Society, Cashcard and Jetstar were out of service due to a fault at a Westpac data centre. Thousands of people were affected and the organisers of Splendour felt that taking this step would give those card holders who were affected by this bank glitch a fair chance to secure tickets.

Event Producers, Jessica Ducrou and Paul Piticco said “We have decided to suspend all ticket sales at 9pm tonight so that all systems can be triple checked before relaunching tomorrow morning at 9am.

“We understand how frustrating it was for so many people this morning. We did expect a ticket rush but none of us expected what happened this morning and unfortunately it was all beyond our control. We were very concerned that all those people who hold Westpac and affiliated cards were disadvantaged today as well and that has contributed to this decision.”

An allocation of both event-camping and event-only tickets has now been set aside to be put on sale tomorrow morning.”

Tickets go back on sale at 9am.

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