Refund ticket money: agency

 SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Australia's consumer agency is urging local Olympic organizers to offer refunds to thousands of people unhappy with their tickets to next year's Summer Games.
 The call was made as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it would investigate whether organizers may have misled or deceived the Australian public over the Olympic ticket offer.
 The inquiry came amid public outcry over the revelation that only a third of Olympic tickets were available to the general public, despite organizers' promises every Australian would have an "equal chance" of getting tickets.
 On Monday, organizers said the Australian public stood almost no chance of getting tickets for some events because about 350,000 of the premium seats were held back from sale.
 For some popular sessions, public availability dropped to as low as two per cent, as the best tickets were allocated to private clubs and travel bureaus or to those with connections to the International Olympic Committee.
 "There have been seemingly poor and deceptive marketing practices, quite possibly in breach of the Trade Practices Act," Commission chairman Professor Fels said today.
 "The public should have been kept fully informed at all stages of the true facts . . . truth in advertising comes ahead of the marketing requirements of any business including SOCOG."
 The Commission had written to the Sydney Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, listing initiatives it believed the organizing committee should consider.
 Among them was a recommendation that Organizing Committee should immediately give refunds to people who received only third-preference tickets "when preferences one and two were not real choices in the circumstances" and who felt they had been misled.
 "A number of people would not have sent in their money had they known the true probabilities of getting a ticket and a number of people are now fairly locked in with tickets of low preference that they have paid for," Fels said.
 

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