When the announcement came out that Olympic tickets would be available online, I submitted my order with high hopes. Orders were to be filled through a lottery type system. I applied for the Opening Ceremonies, basketball, badminton, and tennis but my order was only selected for badminton and tennis. The next step was to collect your tickets.
You were to select the Bank of China where you wanted to go. The receptionist in the front lobby directed me to the appropriate window. Upon showing my passport, the clerk looked up my passport number on a sheaf of papers, then opened the lock on a large canvas bag. My tickets were in a sealed envelope which I was asked to open and verify. I signed for the tickets and was given a booklet with venue maps, rules, and so forth. It was very well organized. I can imagine the difficulty of printing tickets for all those olympic events, session by session and then bundling them for each spectator's order.
I thought the tickets were surprisingly inexpensive. The badminton ticket cost 50 rmb and the tennis ticket cost about 200 rmb. Through a friend in Beijing, I have arranged for accommodations. There have been several articles in the foreign press that Beijing may take all the fun out of the Olympics by their super-cautious attitude. I will report on my experience.
My experience was slightly different.
The on line ordering went just as moothly as you said, however the pickup was an entirely different story.
My pickup location was the Bank of China branch in KFQ. Upon arrival I asked at the help-desk where I could get the tickets. They sent me to the second floor where I was wandering around for a while looking for any signs that would indicate Olympic tickets. Since I couldn't find anything I ended up asking again, this time in some business office (off course nobody spoke English, so I had to call a friend to make my point). The people there had to telephone around first but then some fairly friendly guy told me to follow him. He walked into the wrong office and so it was yet another person to show me to the ticket place - it was inside the VIP-Service are, which I had not entered before, assuming that I was not a VIP.
Compared to this, the issuing of the tickets was fairly easy, however the information material I got is useless. The visitors guide is, despite the English title, entirely in Chinese and the map of Beijing does me no good since we are going to HongKong!
So I guess that it largely depends on where you decide to pick up your tickets and sure hope, that organization in HongKong will be better.
abhijeet
jim
You were to select the Bank of China where you wanted to go. The receptionist in the front lobby directed me to the appropriate window. Upon showing my passport, the clerk looked up my passport number on a sheaf of papers, then opened the lock on a large canvas bag. My tickets were in a sealed envelope which I was asked to open and verify. I signed for the tickets and was given a booklet with venue maps, rules, and so forth. It was very well organized. I can imagine the difficulty of printing tickets for all those olympic events, session by session and then bundling them for each spectator's order. 
I thought the tickets were surprisingly inexpensive. The badminton ticket cost 50 rmb and the tennis ticket cost about 200 rmb. Through a friend in Beijing, I have arranged for accommodations. There have been several articles in the foreign press that Beijing may take all the fun out of the Olympics by their super-cautious attitude. I will report on my experience.
