The Olympic canoe slalom was amazing but ... →[More:]
... when we arrived and our tickets were scanned we were told that we had been re-seated and would need to go to a LOCOG tent to collect new tickets.

WTF? Sue bought these tickets in the first round ballot 18 months ago. So, we went to the tent and were told that, in fact, our second-row seats right in the centre of the course (which cost £150 EACH) did not exist because when they built the seating, they had to change a few things and eliminate some of the rows. But we'd get other seats that were "just as good".

We looked at the plan and the seats they were giving us were right at the start of the course. So, Sue and I argued that these seats were not the same at all, and that we wouldn't be able to see either the exciting gates in the middle of the course or the finish.

"But you can watch it on the big screen" was the response. Er .. excuse me? We did not pay all that money to watch it on the big screen. We made it clear we were extremely unhappy with the response and asked why we weren't contacted beforehand so we could choose new seats. "Because we didn't want this getting into the media." Have they never heard of social networking?

So, we went to the seats they gave us, and this is the view we had - just a few gates at the start. The dip in front of us was obscured by a TV camera and we couldn't see the gates down the course at all. Not happy. We had paid for Category A tickets and these were probably Category C at least. I asked people sitting near us what they'd paid for their tickets and it was much less than £150. Other people sitting near us had also been re-seated and were equally unhappy.

But, Sue and I are both lawyers, we are both used to arguing forcefully and politely, and we made it our mission to be re-seated.

So, just before the semi-finals started, Sue and I went back out to the tent and made it clear that these seats Would Not Do. So they moved the four of us to new seats - Category A - and probably with a better overall view of the whole course than where our original seats would have been (had they existed), and where we could also see the podium.

There were still a number of empty seats around us, some of which, once the event began, were taken by staff from the ticketing tent - those seats could have been used for the other people who'd paid £150 and ended up in the crappy seats and were too English and polite to make a fuss. In this case, I think a fuss was warranted and we made our case forcefully but courteously and got them to move us.

The rest of the day was FANTASTIC! A gold and silver for the GB men and a silver for the 18-year-old Aussie girl. It was really exciting and fun and the atmosphere was brilliant.

But LOCOG, you f'ing well suck.