North parents have been left in limbo after the booking system for summer activities crashed.
Highlife Highland, which looks after Highland Council’s sport and leisure, run a kids’ programme through the summer holidays.
In July and August, parents can book their kids in for free and paid activities from swimming to crafts.
Parents across the north had been encouraged to plan ahead and save their favourites on the Highlife Highland website in advance.
But when the Highlife Highland School’s Out section opened for live bookings at 9am on Monday morning, the problems began immediately.
Dozens of parents reported not being able to get on the site at all, getting timed out as they searched – and then not finding the bookings in their cart as they tried to check out.
Hours later, Highlife Highland bosses shut down the booking system completely until Wednesday in a bid to fix the problems.
What went wrong?
Members have had access to the popular Schools Out summer programme for some time.
They could search for activities that suited their kids among the nearly 1,000 available from July 4 to mid-August.
People with Highlife Highland memberships could mark their choices as favourites to be ready for bookings opening on Monday June 6.
But on booking day, some members were still trying to book at midday.
On the organisation’s own Facebook page, parents were desperately trying to check what was happening from 9am.
One posted: “26 minutes in and bad gateway constantly. You know this is going to be popular. So frustrating.”
Another added: “This is crazy, still can’t get on, shocking. Now at work so don’t have the opportunity to spend getting classes booked.”
The timing clash with school and work starting also caused more problems the longer Highlife Highland School’s Out bookings took.
One Inverness parent added: “We rearranged our schedule so that I could be available to do this in the morning – it goes live right at school run time.
“But after more than half an hour I hadn’t been able to do anything much, so I had to give up and go to work.
“It’s disappointing after two years of lockdown that it looks like the kids aren’t going to get to these activities.”
What do the organisers say?
A Highlife Highland spokesperson said: “We apologise to customers affected by the issues with the website for School’s Out summer activities.
“We do not yet know what has caused the problem with our site and our team is working hard to get the issue resolved as quickly as possible.
“We will keep customers updated through our social media channels when the site is up and running again.
“Thank you for bearing with us.”
They previously said they were extending the amount of time bookings could sit in the cart before checkout. This was to prevent bookings “timing out” due to the slow speed of the system.
On Facebook at about 4.30pm on Monday, Highlife Highland posted: “We apologise to everyone affected by the unexpected issue that arose today.
“Our team is working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.
“The booking system will reopen on Wednesday morning at 9am.”
Conversation