In my occasional series on websites I truly hate this must be the worst so far. The Olympic ticket website is designed to cause the maximum frustration to users by actually lying to them.

The scenario is this

1. Lord Coe appears on telly last night says “please buy some football tickets”
2. The Olympics people send me an email saying “please buy some football tickets”
3. I think  “My 9 year-old son would like to go to Wembley.”
4. I login, search for some tickets, see the blue flags saying kid’s tickets are available
5. I try to buy them and get told that they are not available.

Note, that this is nothing to do with the difficulty of making real-time information available under load. Those little blue flags are still there on events that have been sold out for months.

Basically it is crap design and they don’t care because they have a monopoly on sales.

If anyone is inclined to comment that the column heading says “Special prices” not “Special prices available” then I suggest that they lock themselves in a room with 50 users and make their case.