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Overbooking prevention

Capacity is checked when each payment is confirmed. If two people race for the last ticket, the second is refunded automatically.

How it works

When someone opens the booking form, Chobble Tickets compares the number of confirmed attendees against the event capacity. If the event is full, the form is replaced with a sold-out message.

For a paid booking, this check does not reserve a ticket or use capacity. Capacity is checked again and used only when payment confirmation arrives.

Whoever confirms second is kept rather than dropped, refunded once, and the reason is written against their booking, so you can see who it was and what happened to their money.

A screenshot of the note the site writes against a booking, saying it was kept at quantity 0 and its payment refunded because the event filled up while they were paying
Somebody whose payment arrived after the last place had gone is kept, refunded once, and the reason is written against their booking. (src)

What happens if two people pay for the last ticket

Two people can both reach the payment page for the last ticket at the same time because neither checkout reserves it. When their payment confirmations arrive from Stripe, Square or SumUp, Chobble Tickets checks capacity again. The first confirmed payment gets the ticket. The later payment is refunded automatically and the customer sees the message:

Sorry, this event sold out while you were completing payment.

The refund is issued automatically, so you do not have to handle it yourself.

Per-date capacity

For daily events, the same checks run for each date independently. A class on Monday filling up does not affect Tuesday's availability.

Other checks after payment

The confirmation step also checks prices, listing status, package members, required child choices and add-ons again. It does not rely on the values sent by the browser.

If a paid order can no longer be honoured, Chobble Tickets keeps a quantity-zero record, issues the refund, records the cash movement and adds a note for the organiser. This leaves an audit trail of the failed booking without counting it against capacity.

Limitations

These checks are a best effort. They prevent overbooking under normal operation, but they are not a guarantee. A software bug, a database outage, or a delayed payment confirmation from Stripe, Square, or SumUp could still let an oversell through. If that happens, Chobble Tickets refunds the affected customer.