Tickets scramble for London Olympics

一個尷尬的售票錯誤讓本想看花樣游泳比賽的200來人意外得到了看男子100米短跑決賽的機會。這個事情還要從售票中的錯誤說起.

Around 200 people who thought to watch synchronized swimming have received an unexpected upgrade to the men's 100m final following an embarrassing ticketing mistake.

經2012倫敦奧組委證實，由于售票過程出現了一個明顯不同步的錯誤，導致四場花樣游泳賽事門票超額預訂10000張.

The London 2012 organising committee (Locog) confirmed that a decidedly unsynchronized error in its ticketing process had led to four synchronized swimming sessions being oversold by 10,000 tickets.

原因是一名工作人員犯了一個鍵盤輸入錯誤，將剩余門票數10000張錯輸入為20000張。奧組委在核對已賣票數、最終場館布局和座位安排時發現了這個錯誤，圣誕節前就開始同門票持有者聯系，盡最大努力補償那些誠意購買門票的粉絲。主要的補償方式是向他們提供其他選擇，第一個備選就是那些他們以前沒能申請到的賽事門票。倫敦奧組委不但不收取花樣游泳門票和備選門票的差價，如果新門票比原來的便宜，還會返還差價。而替換門票是各場賽事未售出的一些座位.

Locog said the error occurred when a member of staff made a single keystroke mistake and entered '20,000' into a spreadsheet rather than the correct figure of 10,000 remaining tickets. The error was discovered when Locog reconciled the number of tickets sold against the final layouts and seating configurations for venues, and began contacting ticket holders before Christmas. They were doing all it could to make good the error to fans who bought tickets in good faith, offering them alternatives, starting with tickets for sports they had applied for but been unsuccessful.The upgrades have come at no additional cost, with Locog not charging for any discrepancy between the synchronized swimming tickets and the alternatives on offer. It has also offered to repay any discrepancy if the new tickets cost less than the originals. The replacement tickets would come from a stock of unsold seats across the Olympic Games.

于是，成千上萬的門票持有者碰上了好運，他們把門票換為游泳和田徑決賽等大型賽事的門票，約200人得到了最火的賽事——男子100米決賽的門票，因為這一賽事與出錯票涉及的一場花樣游泳比賽同在8月5日下午舉行.

Thousands of ticketholders have already struck lucky, upgrading to tickets for major events including swimming and athletics finals, and in around 200 cases the hottest ticket of all, the men's 100m final, because one of the synchronized swimming sessions is on the same afternoon as the event, August 5.

詞語注釋：

尷尬（gāngà）Awkward

花樣游泳（huāyàng yóuyǒng）Synchronized swimming

超額（chāo'é）Excess; Above the quota

差價（chājià）Price difference

田徑（tiánjìng）Track and field

涉及（shèjí）Involve; relate to

（Source: myechinese.com)