BEIJING, May 5: Ticket sales for the Beijing Olympics again ran into problems on Monday, despite guarantees that the online system had been repaired after an earlier foul-up led to the dismissal of the ticket centre’s director last year.

A total of 1.38 million tickets were to be released in the third round of ticket sales that began on Monday for 16 sports.

But online chat files and blog comments showed that ticket buyers were having problems completing purchases.

While people were able to log on to the website and select tickets fairly easily, they could not reach the final payment page.

A message reading, “The system is under maintenance. Please visit the page later” appeared on the screen. And the website kept directing users back to the login page, and finally showed a message apologising for not being able to process the purchase.—Reuters