Oasis fans were left fuming on Monday when a major tech outage at Westpac left many unable to purchase pre-sale tickets for the band’s 2025 Australian tour.
Melbourne and Sydney fanatics of the English rock group who bank with Westpac missed out on early bird tickets as they were unable to access their money through the app or online banking.
They flocked to socials to slam the company for the ‘inconvenient’ outage which was eventually remedied at 3:15pm — hours after pre-sale tickets opened for purchase.
Westpac apologised to customers on X, formerly known as Twitter, for the ‘disruption’ and thanked users ‘for your patience during this time’.
But Oasis fans weren’t having it as they were left fuming over missing out on the presale – which kicked off at 12pm for the Melbourne dates at 2pm for Sydney.
‘Not good enough. Not the first time & I’m sick of the fake apologies,’ one aspiring eventgoer raged.
‘The inconvenience caused is not ok & the hollow apologies are so insincere it makes me sick! Is Westpac going to ensure I get my tickets for Oasis?! Missed out due to the “inconvenient” issues!’
Another wrote: ‘Stopped me from getting Oasis tickets! Had the tickets reserved – went to my Westpac app to get my credit card details…. Something’s not working…. Something’s not working… Not happy.’
Oasis fans were left fuming on Monday as a major tech outage at Westpac left many unable to purchase pre-sale tickets for the band’s 2025 Australian tour. Pictured: Oasis frontmen Liam and Noel Gallagher
A third added, ‘Great day for Westpac banking Oasis fans,’ while someone else on Facebook moaned: ‘Just as oasis tickets come out.’
As the pre-sale kicked off on Monday, tickets for the Aussie leg of the Oasis’ reunion tour were reportedly flying out the door for more than $300 a pop.
Fans took to X to vent their frustrations what they claimed was some of the most expensive ticket pricing they have encountered.
Aussie fans who registered for pre-sale tickets last week and received a special code from OpenStage were able to access the pre-sale from 12pm on Monday, October 14, for the Melbourne concert dates, and from 2pm AEDT for the Sydney concert dates.
The pre-sale codes were allocated by a ballot system, with registrations now closed.
General ticket sales for the four Australia shows are slated to open on Tuesday, October 15, at 10am in Melbourne and 12pm in Sydney.
Noel and Liam Gallagher are slated to take to the stage at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium on October 31 and November 1.
They will then head to Sydney to perform at the Accor Stadium on both November 7 and 8.
Melbourne and Sydney fanatics of the English rock group who bank with Westpac missed out on early bird tickets as they were unable to access their money through the app or online banking
Amid the ticketing chaos, the Westpac outage saw thousands of Australians unable to access their money through the app or online banking.
Over 7,000 complaints were reported on the tech monitoring site Downdetector on Monday afternoon.
Westpac promptly acknowledged the issue and have since restored its app and website.
‘We’re aware that customers are experiencing issues accessing online and mobile banking,’ the bank said in a statement when the outage occurred.
‘Our teams are working to fix the issue. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.’
Australians took to social media amid the outrage to complain over being unable to access their money due to the issue.
‘It happened right when everyone was going to lunch. I needed to transfer money as I filter everything through my main account but couldn’t do the transfer and hence couldn’t get lunch,’ one said.
‘Stuck at the fuel station and I can’t pay, please hurry up,’ another added.
Fans flocked to socials to slam the company for the ‘inconvenient’ outage which was eventually remedied at 3:15pm—hours after pre-sale tickets were opened for purchase
Westpac apologised to customers on X, formerly known as Twitter, for the ‘disruption’ and thanked users ‘for your patience during this time’
Others pointed out that the incident highlighted the challenges that come with Australia’s shift toward becoming a cashless society.
Despite the increasing number of Aussies opting for cashless transactions both in stores and online, Swinburne University business professor Steve Worthington stated that cash will remain essential, especially in light of such outages.
‘Cash can’t crash,’ he told AAP earlier this year.
‘When the telecoms break down or the IT systems of the banks break down, you’re left high and dry.’
A major Westpac tech outage caused the app and online banking to stop working for thousands of Australians, leaving them unable to access their money
The outage comes just days after the bank ended cardless cash withdrawals, forcing customers to use a physical bank card to withdraw money from an ATM.
‘As part of continually reviewing our products and services, Westpac will no longer offer the cardless cash withdrawal feature,’ Westpac announced.
The bank claimed the change was part of a continual review into its ‘products and services’.
It stressed that customers will still be able to make cash withdrawals from Westpac ATMs across Australia as long as they use their physical card, and cash transactions can also be made at branches across the country.
Westpac confirmed that cardless cash deposits would still be available to customers.
Some customers were furious about change, with many claiming ending cardless cash withdrawals ‘seemed like a backward step’.
‘Like a lot of people I don’t carry a physical card with me anymore, so cardless cash is really my only option if I need cash unexpectedly. Seems like a backward step,’ one wrote.
Westpac has announced it is shutting down its cardless cash withdrawal service
One Aussie, who claimed to work at Westpac, explained the service was removed due to an ‘insanely high’ amount of fraud and scam incidents.
‘I work for Westpac at the branch level and the reason we removed them is the number of fraud and scam incidents happening with this ability was insanely high. Like 1,000 in the past month,’ they claimed.
‘Furthermore, there are actually only around 4,000 cardless cash withdrawals a week nationally which is a drop in the bucket for overall branch transactions.
‘It’s just too much of a pain in the a*** to administer at branch level with the frauds and scams and too many people exploiting other people’s internet banking to get the SMS code to extract money.’