London 2012 organisers Locog are left red-faced as ticket resale online system fails on launch day Many more were frustrated however, particularly by the lack of any indication as to how many tickets were available, and a misleading statement that suggested selected tickets had been secured when users clicked on "proceed to checkout." In fact the tickets were not secured until the system had refreshed, a process taking up to two minutes that generally ended with customers being told the tickets were not available. The more serious problem was a failure in the "back end" of the system that prevented users from uploading their unwanted tickets. Without this process working the re-sale principle was entirely undermined, so around midday the sales process was suspended. By late afternoon the site was still not functioning and Locog closed all services. "We have told Ticketmaster to suspend the resale system whilst they investigate some issues customers have been experiencing," Locog said in a statement. We will reopen the site once Ticketmaster have resolved these. The resale failure is the latest in a series of controversies and glitches in the ticketing system. The original ballot system was criticised for favouring those customers able to risk large sums on high-value tickets, and failing to get tickets to enough people. The second round process was also dogged by system and demand problems. Earlier this week meanwhile Locog admitted that it had oversold 10,000 tickets for the synchronised swimming and was attempting to offer ticket holders alternative events. Locog is partly a victim of the huge demand for Olympic tickets, but is also paying the price for its failure to build systems robust enough to cope and its reliance on Ticketmaster. The system used for the resale process is an "off-the-shelf" Ticketmaster product that has patently proved inadequate. There are close ties between Locog and Ticketmaster, with the company's former group sales director Paul Williamson recruited as London 2012 head of ticketing in 2007. The decision to run the sales and purchase elements of the resale simultaneously, rather than securing tickets before offer them for sale, also looks questionable. On Friday night Ticketmaster declined to comment on the reasons for the latest problems. We are not fielding any questions. We are a service provider to the London 2012 organising committee and we have agreed to not provide any comment," said a spokesman. The resale process was scheduled to run from Friday until Feb 6, with 1.3 million tickets for Olympic football and around 500,000 Paralympic tickets also on sale. The site will then reopen in April and run until the conclusion of the Games.