Booking Festival tickets online has Fringe benefits.

There has been a lot of press recently on the difficulties the Edinburgh Fringe Festival have faced since launching their programme for this year. Firstly, the online booking system was delayed by a week or so. Then, last Friday the Scotsman reported that those customers who had used the site to buy online were finding out that they had been charged up to 6 times for the same tickets due to confusion with the purchase process.

My own experience with the site has matched that of the stories reported, as I am sure it has with many others. Recently, my partner tried to purchase tickets and was frustrated to find out that after selecting tickets and attempting to purchase them, he was presented with page informing him that an error had occurred but it was not possible to say if the purchase had gone through or not. To find out more we were advised to call the box office...

The box office were not able to conclusively say if we had purchased the tickets or not as they stated the booking was 'awaiting payment'. Did this mean the payment was in process from the bank, or the site had not received payment details? In the end we gave up and decided to watch for transactions on the account to see if any money was debited. So far nothing has materialised.

Since our experience, we have decided to do it the old fashioned way and physically go to the box office. However, it seems so archaic to resort to this strategy with all the technology at our fingertips. Sometimes it really is the easier option.

What is most alarming about this issue is that it's not a new problem. In 2004, User Vision wrote an article- The Show Must Go On(line) which examined the user experience of a selection of Edinburgh Festival sites. More recently my colleague and I revisited this issue to see where, if any improvements have been made in the full article, Booking festival tickets online has Fringe benefits. It appears that much still needs to be done to significantly improve the site's usability.