OK, so this is very much a first world problem. But:

Every October for the last few years Glastonbury has been on, I have tried, without luck, to purchase tickets for the festival. Every year, along with tens of thousands of others, I am left staring at the Cannot Be Displayed page or Server Overload page for several minutes before finding out that all the tickets have sold out. The See Tickets server simply cannot handle the numbers. And this year I see that many people also got through to the payment stage before being kicked off, which is worse than not getting through at all!

The current system favours larger groups (albeit a maximum of six), for whom just one person needs to get through to purchase tickets for all of them. It discriminates against singles, couples or families with children below registration age because they do not have the numbers to all be monitoring screens.

I appreciate that demand is higher than the supply and to a certain extent that's just the way it goes. But why not try a ballot system to remove all the grief and hassle? As there is already a registration system in place, this would be fairly straightforward.

A ballot system would allow people to confirm interest with a deposit over a longer period of time.

A ballot system could still allow groups, but each registration number could only have one registration. One number gets through and the rest do too.

A ballot system could allow unsuccessful applicants from previous years to be prioritised by setting a number of tickets aside for previously unsuccessful applicants.

A ballot system could allow for allocations for specific group types - singles, couples, groups and families, ensuring diversity of age range. On application, people could state which allocation applies to them.

A ballot system could do all these things if desired, but the most important thing is that a ballot system is used, rather than the first come first served on a website that repeatedly crashes. Because that isn't first come first served, it is first to get through is first served - which favours people with higher connection speed and applying in larger groups.

Dear Glastonbury, please, please do something to make the system a little fairer for all who want to go and enjoy the festival.