People who have applied to purchase Olympic tickets are reminded to pay special attention to their email boxes, since the reply letter delivered by the Beijing Olympics organizer, BOCOG, may possibly be categorized as spam.

An employee with the BOCOG ticket center displays an application table for the tickets purchase. People can order more than 7 million tickets of the Beijing Olympics before the Games kick off next August. (File Photo: cnsphoto)

The Shanghai Youth Daily has reported that some applicants, using email services offered by Hotmail.com, Yahoo China and 263.com have complained about this issue.

A local citizen, surnamed Wang, told the paper that he fortunately noticed the BOCOG letter in his hotmail box when glancing through the spam column accidentally.

Wang was not the only person annoyed with the discreet filter function of his email system. One of his mates, a user of 263.com, was also close an erroneous deletion that he narrowly avoided by recognizing the suffix of the sender's address: "beijing2008.cn."

The BOCOG's reply letter is very important since it will confirm whether a buyer's bid for Olympic tickets is valid or not.

Valid bidders are required to make payments through the Bank of China no later than September 30 or their order will be nullified, the report said.

IT technicians said that the problem probably results from strict anti-spam programs designed by the email service providers. They advise applicants to re-check their safety level settings in their email boxes or add the domain name of the BOCOG to the reliable list.

An employee with the BOCOG ticket center said that they would be sure to reply to every ticket bidder, as long as the email address is correct. Applicants who miss the letter by wrongly deleting their mail will not be given a rain check, he added.

(CRI September 5, 2007)