Fans miss Valegro at Olympia due to ticketing error
Several Olympia visitors were left disappointed this year after being allocated tickets for seats that did not exist.
The fans attended the first day of the show (13 December), which featured a demonstration by Charlotte Dujardin and Valegro.
Emma Heath-Plummer travelled from Peterborough to the London venue with her daughter and two friends.
“We had ticket numbers that didn’t exist,” she told H&H.
Initially the group sat in alternative seats, but when Charlotte and Valegro were due to start their demonstration more people returned to their seats and they had to move.
Ms Heath-Plummer spoke to a steward, who was initially unable to help.
“We were blocking the view and people were shouting at us to get out the way — we felt awful,” she said.
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Stewards eventually directed all those with incorrect tickets to a different area.
But by the time the group got to their new seats, they had missed Charlotte’s demonstration.
“We’ve had compensation for the tickets which isn’t really the point — we would have rather seen the show,” Ms Heath-Plummer added.
“It was an early Christmas present for the children. We managed to watch Charlotte on red button, but my daughter said it’s not quite the same as it would have been — it was a bit of a shambles.”
An Olympia spokesman said the problem was caused by a mistake with the seating plan.
“The arena has over 7,000 seats,” an Olympia spokesman told H&H.
“SEE Tickets build the seating plan on their box office systems. Unfortunately they built in an extra row, which were sold. This totalled 18 seats.
“Once this error was discovered on Tuesday night (13 December) all of the guests who were in those seats were contacted by phone and emailed and were reallocated into seats of the equivalent price or better.”
Meanwhile Cara Jenkins arrived at the show and found her seat had been double booked.
“My friend and I had identical seat numbers to another couple,” she told H&H.
“Luckily the other couple were watching from the warm up ring for a part of the show and then there were some spare seats by the time they came back.
“We would have been so upset had we missed seeing any of Carl, Charlotte and Valegro’s performances, but luckily for us things worked out ok.”
Ms Jenkins added that she had wanted to visit Olympia since she was a child and it was a “fantastic experience” besides the ticketing issue.
“We have had a couple of isolated cases of double bookings,” added the Olympia spokesman.
“As soon as we were made aware of the issues, we reallocated seats as efficiently as possible.”
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Rachael joined Horse & Hound in 2014, initially as a digital sub editor then became part of the news team as a writer in 2015. The philosophy graduate studied journalism at the Press Association before working as a local reporter at the Brentwood Gazette. Rachael is now a mum of two and still loves all things equestrian, including hacking, dressage and jumping with her cob Bert. Rachael left the H&H staff to go freelance in June 2019, but still contributes to our magazine and website, as well as our sister magazine Country Life, among others.