Royal Mail apologies over Everton ticket shambles

Sep 22 2007 By Deborah James

THE Royal Mail last night apologised to thousands of Everton fans whose tickets went missing before Thursday night’s UEFA cup tie.

The club last night estimated at least 3,500 tickets never arrived at the homes of fans, out of a batch of a batch of 5,000 that was posted out on Monday.

Kick-off had to be delayed by 25 minutes after around 2,000 fans arrived to collect replacement tickets at the Goodison Park gates before the match against Ukrainian side Metalist Kharkiv.

Everton officials yesterday held talks with Royal Mail, which has launched an investigation to find out what went wrong.

A spokesman for the club said a batch of 5,000 match tickets was collected by Royal Mail from the Goodison Park box office on Monday.

All tickets bore first-class postage and should have been delivered the next morning.

A spokesman for Royal Mail refused to say whether rumours the tickets had been stolen were being investigated. But he said it was impossible to trace the tickets.

He said: “We apologise to fans for any inconvenience caused. We are working closely with Everton Football Club and investigating this issue. As the items were sent by normal First Class post and not by Special Delivery, it is not possible to track the posted items.

“We continue to work closely with the club to ensure that we provide them the best possible service.”

The club last night said it fully understood why fans were angry, and admitted it had no idea there was a problem at the gates until police reported a build-up of fans before kick-off.

Ian Ross, Everton’s head of PR, said: “The batch of tickets – all properly franked and enveloped – was collected on Monday. Quite what happened thereafter, we really don’t know, which is why we have asked the Royal Mail to look into this as a matter of some urgency.

“We fully understand why some supporters were annoyed – they had every right to be, having paid for something which never arrived.

“Thankfully, we know from our turnstile data that, when the game did kick off, 98% of supporters were safely inside the stadium.

“The whole thing is regrettable but, clearly, the problem occurred after the tickets had left Goodison Park on Monday,’’ he added.

“We were totally unaware of any problem until police and stewards reported a build-up of fans - most of whom were without the tickets they had ordered.

“We dealt with the problem as swiftly and as efficiently as we could – but the numbers were so great that we simply had to delay the kick-off on safety grounds.”

Mr Ross stressed 99% of fans who were eligible to attend the game were inside the ground by kick-off on Thursday.