LONDON - London Olympics organizers plan to re-open a ticket resale website Tuesday for the Summer Games but only for people who want to resell their tickets.
The ticket resale will allow people to return tickets, resuming a resale effort that stalled earlier this month when the computer site crashed. London has suffered several computer glitches because demand for the July 27-Aug. 12 event has outstripped supply.
Ticket holders can offer their tickets for resale at face value until Feb. 3. Those who want to buy those Olympic tickets will have to wait until April.
"We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by the suspension of our ticketing resale platform," said Chris Townsend, the commercial director for the organizers. "We made a commitment to our customers to give them a safe, secure and legal way of selling Olympic and Paralympic tickets which they are no longer able to use. We are delivering on that commitment."
The decision to delay the resumption of purchases reflects a tacit acknowledgment by Olympics organizers that demand for tickets has exceeded the capability of their computers systems to address them.
London's organizers have struggled with ticket sales -- and the public anger that has emerged after several faltering efforts to make the sales fair and equitable. Frustration began from the start, with a complicated lottery system in which people blindly registered for tickets and handed over their credit card details before learning what tickets they were getting.
Two-thirds of ticket seekers failed to earn any in a first round that ended in April, with 22 million requests for 6.6 million available tickets. While some of those tickets will come back in resale -- because the plans of the buyers have changed -- organizers acknowledge that those numbers will be limited.
Another round was blighted by computer problems -- even before the troubles with the resales earlier this month.
