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Frustrated rugby fans who bought tickets for next year's World Cup jammed a ticket helpline yesterday after being told there were problems with credit card transactions.
Fans from around the world were supposed to hear yesterday whether their applications for tickets in the phase-one ballot had been successful.
But emails warned there were problems in processing credit card transactions and urged fans to call a helpdesk number. For much of the day the lines were jammed.
The Rugby World Cup 2011 Facebook site was inundated with complaints that credit card transactions had not gone through.
One fan, Betty from Britain, said: "I have received an email to say our application was successful but there was a problem with my card.
"When I applied, I had a different card and I phoned to explain this and gave new card details, but they have been trying on the old card."
The Rugby World Cup moderators confirmed "there are a lot of people in your situation, and as a result the phone lines are very busy".
A spokesman for Rugby New Zealand 2011, Mike Jaspers, said there was no problem with ticketing and blamed credit card processing.
"This is not a ticketing processing issue," he said. "It's simply that we have not been able to transact the payment on some customers' cards, which could be for a variety of reasons, such as credit limits or expiry date.
"The most important message we can give customers is that their tickets will not be cancelled."
A Mt Albert resident who received the confirmation email said: "Why don't they have enough people answering the phones? You would have hoped they would have anticipated quite a busy day when they send out these emails."
Another fan who managed to get his credit card issue resolved after multiple attempts said: "Getting through to them this morning was impossible ... They're not telling anybody yet what they've been successful for, what tickets they're going to get. They're just taking their money."
Mr Jaspers said issues with processing were not unusual given the scale of the operation. He expected the problems would be fixed by next week.
Customers who have credit card problems have until next Wednesday to contact 0800 RUGBY11.
House of Travel executive Brent Thomas said people buying travel packages were unaffected by the processing issues. "We process periodically as sales come through instead of in a mad rush."
