Cork Opera House ‘sorry’ for Bon Iver ticket frustrations

Cork Opera House has apologised to music fans for the issues that plagued its ‘frustrating’ booking system during the sale of tickets for a hotly anticipated show.

Grammy-award-winning band Bon Iver are to play the venue in September as part of the Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival, and tickets for the show were sold out within minutes of going on sale yesterday morning.

However, customers who were online and mid-transaction as the show sold out had the cost of the tickets they were in the process of ordering held, pending a transaction on their cards — despite not being successful in buying tickets.

“These transactions were never actually charged to the patrons’ cards,” the venue said in a statement.

“In some cases, the money was temporarily held but has subsequently been refunded. Tickets.com are doing their upmost to ensure that funds are released back into our patrons’ accounts as quickly as possible.”

Eibhlín Gleeson, CEO of Cork Opera House, said the ticketing system is being reviewed in light of the incident. “We understand how deeply frustrating, disappointing, and impactful this was on our valued patrons,” she said.

“I want to apologise to all of those who were affected and I can assure you that we are working to ensure that this does not occur again.”

Andy Buckland, director of service delivery at Tickets.com, said the issue arose due to “technical problems” with online systems.

“Tickets.com would like to apologise for the inconvenience this has caused customers of Cork Opera House who themselves are in no way responsible for the failure,” he said.