Australians have been caught up in an Olympic ticketing fiasco in which some fans feared they would be prevented from collecting tickets they had already paid for.
Rochelle Joliffe and Brad Miln were the lucky ones - they only had to queue three hours to pick up their tickets, while other angry customers had lined up in London for nine hours.
One local man started queuing at the collection centre in London's west at 10am on Monday and left at 7pm after being told the ticketing company CoSport could not find his tickets.
CoSport, the ticket agent for the Australian Olympic Committee, the US and half a dozen other countries, has set up one centre for collection in Paddington.
Joliffe of Adelaide queued to collect her beach volleyball, basketball and badminton tickets, but was initially turned away.
"The system's rubbish. It's understaffed, no one has any idea, there's a lack of management. I'd be out of a job if I treated people like this," she said.
Eight staff are sitting at one desk to manually find and distribute the hundreds of thousands of tickets sold overseas and to locals unwilling to pay up to STG40 ($A61) for delivery costs.
Miln of Townsville spent $2000 on tickets and was another turned away before centre manager Robert Long was coerced by an angry crowd into reopening the queue he had closed at 12.45pm after it opened at 9am.
"The woman who served me said 'some tickets are in envelopes - some are upstairs. We don't know where they are - they're completely unsorted'," Miln said.
Australians had the option of having their tickets sent to their home address after July 11, but anyone who arrived in London before that date has to collect their tickets at the centre in the City of Westminster College foyer.
A crowd of around 70 fans from Australia, the US, Brazil and other countries, including Britain, who arrived an hour before the scheduled 7pm closing time, responded angrily when they were told by Long to return early on Tuesday.
Londoner Emily Williams feared she would not be able to pick up the gymnastics, tennis and swimming tickets she bought last year.
"I'm out of London for work for the rest of the week. The first event I'm going to is on Saturday, so I won't be able to go," she said.
She was able to collect her tickets after a three-hour wait when Long eventually agreed to reopen the queue under the weight of the angry crowd.
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