A pair of tennis fans say their Australian Open dream has been crushed after a ticketing botch-up – they leave on Sunday to watch the tournament, but the ticketing error means they won't be sitting together.
Katrina Welleans and Deanne Osbourne are huge tennis fans, so last February the pair bought tickets together for the Australian Open, which starts in Melbourne on Monday.
"It's number one on my bucket list [and] I'm pretty sure with Deanne as well," Ms Welleans says. "It's huge. We've always wanted to see Roger Federer."
The pair paid just over $1200 each, for a day and night session at the tennis plus accommodation.
But last Friday when their tickets arrived, they discovered their allocated seats are on opposite sides of Rod Laver Arena.
Ms Welleans says their dream has come crashing down and she's been in tears all week.
The pair booked the package through Flight Centre, who says the case is an isolated one amongst the tickets they sold to the event.
"It's an anomaly to be honest, it's very rare that we run into these kind of issues with this type of event," says Flight Centre general product manager Sean Berenson.
House of Travel says about 20 percent of their customers are in a similar predicament to Katrina and Deanne.
Director Brent Thomas says the reason for the botch-up is because this the first time the Australian ticketing office has given allocated seats.
"Previously you'd get a big group and you could sort them out between our customers. This year they're allocated so unfortunately we've got situations where five people are going over and we've only got four seats together, so we've had to send them back to get new seats allocated."
Mr Thomas says they've been able to address most of their customer's issues already.
This afternoon Flight Centre gave the woman new tickets, most importantly they are seated together.
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