Internet Session Timed Out but still charged for tickets

davidparfett

I bought tickets at the weekend on the internet from a commercial vendor. I entered my payment details at the end of the purchasing process, pressed Submit and waited.

After a few seconds I was presented with a "Session Timed Out" screen.

It turns out that the tickets were purchased. An hour later I received a confirmation of sale.

However I believe I should be able to reject the purchase given that the system presented a "Session Timed Out" message. I had, in the meantime, purchased from another supplier as I was not impressed by their purchasing process timing out (I hadn't taken long to enter my details!).

Do I have a reason to reject the 'timed out' purchase?

fluffnutter

Legally? Probably not although you could certainly try asking. The onus is on you to check whether the payment has been taken/transaction completed and an hour to get the confirmation email will probably be deemed to be a perfectly reasonable amount of time to wait before purchasing elsewhere. This does happen a lot with internet sites and the advice is to check before you make alternative arrangements.

fluffnutter

Had you purchased again from the same site because you believed your first transaction to be void, then you'd have probably had some success getting one of the payments returned. Unfortunately you went elsewhere but it's still worth using this hypothetical argument to try to win favour

halibut2209

I expect you had a chance to view the terms and conditions before pressing submit, which would probably have said that the contract would be formed upon pressing that button. I feel it will come down to the goodwill of the company.

if not, there's always eBay

fluffnutter

Or flog the first set on ebay for enormous profit

I'm going to stop answering now, and let someone else have a go

davidparfett

Flogging the spare tickets for enormous profit is probably the way to go.

Maybe I'm a perfectionist but I find it difficult to accept that a large organisation trading on the internet can get away with a purchasing process which leaves the buyer confused.

I'll add them to my (short) list of companies to not buy from.

vikingaero

In my experience, when a session times out on checkout it invariably means that the item/service has been purchased but the return page confirming it to you has not been delivered. The only guaranteed way of refusing the purchase would be a hard copy print out of the time-out page.