VOUCHER SCRAMBLE

Rush on holiday vouchers not without its problems

Tasmanians have again jumped at the chance to secure special travel vouchers, with round 2 of the Make

Yourself at Home scheme selling out last night in just over an hour. But hundreds of people were

frustrated to miss out due to problems with online registration and phone hotline.

IT took 64 minutes f or the $5m second round of Tasmania’s Make Yourself at Home travel vouchers to run out, with frustrations high over website crashes and phone-indelays.

The state government said about 35,000 people logged on to the site from 7pm.

Tasmanians caught up in the rush quickly faced error messages and engaged phone lines.

Mercury readers posted on Facebook they had major issues, including trouble with navigating the website.

“The website crashed, the button didn’t work, the phone number failed,” Steven Mallows said.

“Register button wasn’t there to click and kept going on a loop back to home page,” Claire Dennis said.

“No luck! Page froze and then said the service is unavailable. Ridiculous ,” Fiona Wells said.

“A website which stopped working at 7pm, two phone numbers which were on the website said “The number you have dialled has been disconnected ”, J orin de Ten ten said.

Twitter users shared a “back door link” as the only apparent link that worked, while direct access via the more obvious travel vouchers page seemed to fail.

Those lucky enough to access the application form were required to tick a box with a disclaimer saying they could not register again if they still possessed an active round one voucher.

One caller to the Mercury lastnight–who asked not to be named–said she tried the 1800 344 077 hotline “about 60 times” with each call either dropping out or being met with a voice recording saying the number was unavailable.

The caller said she was supportive of the government’ s efforts to stimulate the tourism sector, but felt the rollout was inadequate. “The intent is excellent and all we want to do is do our part,” she said. “If there’s not enough phone operators then don’t advertise it as an option.”

The Mercury tried numerous times to reach the hotline and experienced much of the same problems.

“Connection to the area you are calling is temporally unavailable,” one voice recording said.

The first round of travel vouchers in early September ran out within 40 minutes.

The Tasmanian hospitality industry has called for a third tranche of the scheme, this time supporting struggling restaurants, caf es, pub sand bars.

Premier Peter Gutwein thanked Tasmanians for emb racing the scheme.

“I know Tasmanians who missed out will be disappointed, but this initiative is about supporting our tourism and hospitality industry and it’s been welcomed by Tasmanians in droves ,” he said.

“For those who did miss out, I’d urge you all to still get out and support the industry if you are able.”

THE WEBSITE CRASHED, THE BUTTON DIDN’T WORK, THE PHONE NUMBER FAILED.

STEVEN MALLOWS, ON FACEBOOK