You do have to wonder what the point is?

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This evening, I turned up at my local sports centre to find that the badminton court had been double booked.  Both me and another guy had booked the same court for the same time, and the online booking system had let us do that.  Both of our user accounts on the system were showing that we had the booking – but the calendar view in the sports centre was showing only his booking and so he got the caught.

Whilst I can’t fault the staff at the sports centre – they didn’t know it had happened until I turned up expecting the court – and they did try to find me another court and even found someone willing to share a court if we were happy to play doubles (which I wasn’t, as I’m strictly a singles player) but it is rather frustrating.

It’s even more frustrating when you realise that exactly the same thing has happened with my booking tomorrow night – which is even more frustrating…

The problem is, of course, that there is very little I can do to check whether this problem gets resolved or not.  I can still make a booking online and see it appear in my list of bookings – but that doesn’t actually mean that I have the court when I turn up in person.  And I could call the sports centre to check that the booking worked successfully – but by the time I get through to them on the phone, the court will no longer be available (I should explain that evening courts are a scarce resource at the local sports centre)

Given that Monday and Tuesday are my badminton days this week, and that there are no courts available later in the week – one little bug in the online booking system has cost me an entire week of badminton.  Fantastic.

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