It has not been a great week for Watford FC Fans. And for some it has got a little bit worse as they received their phone bills to discover they had racked up large charges in their bid to buy tickets for the Wembley game.

Some fans said they have been landed with bills of more than £100 from repeatedly calling the Ticketmaster line in the build-up to the Crystal Palace game.

Ticketmaster has defended its handling of the sales saying it used the cheapest number available and employed extra staff for to cope with the demand.

Student Krishan Gobey, said he was left "annoyed" after he discovered he had his bill had rocketed to £101 due to his efforts trying to buy tickets for himself and his dad, sister and girlfriend.

He said: "I was desperate to get hold of the tickets. Usually you are put in a queue but when I called Ticketmaster I got kicked off so I kept calling back."

The 23-year-old from Leicester, who is studying to become a primary school teacher in Liverpool, became a Hornet due to his dad, Paul, who used lived in Watford.

This week he said he got a shock when he opened his bill.

"I was annoyed," said Mr Gobey. "I had a feeling at the time that it could be quite high, but I did not expect that".

Brothers Peter and Daniel Barnes were also left with a large phone bill from their efforts to get Wembley tickets.

The pair who live in Surrey have been Hornets since their dad was given Watford FC season tickets by Elton John after he did building work on his house in the 1980s.

In the week before the Wembley match Daniel, 37, from Camberley, called the Ticketmaster line repeatedly to get hold of tickets and clocked up a bill of more than £40.

Peter, 40, from Woking, said: "The thing is everyone was in such a frenzy to get tickets they were willing to do whatever without thinking about the consequences.

"Ticketmaster must have made a fortune out of it."

Watford FC used Ticketmaster for the Wembley sales as the company is the club’s official partner. The club also said it did not have the capacity to deal with the Wembley ticket sales in-house.

Watford Observer:

Watford fans' heartbreak after the 1-0 defeat against Crystal Palace on Monday.

Responding to fans’ complaints, Katie White, a spokesman for Ticketmaster, said: "Firstly, we're very sorry to hear that of the problems that a small number of customers experiences when trying to contact our ticket hotline, however due to the extraordinary demand for tickets for this match, we were extremely busy when tickets went on sale.

"We can assure you that we had anticipated a very high level of calls and had increased the number of our agents in our call centre operation to respond to as many calls as possible and we successfully sold thousands of tickets for this match.

"When all our agents are busy taking calls, we have the option to offer the next caller either an engaged tone, to queue the call until the next agent becomes available or play a brief message advising the caller to call back later.

"On this occasion, we chose the final option, as the sheer volume of calls could have resulted in unacceptably long queue times. We know this isn’t always ideal, but we feel it’s important to let customers know that we can’t take their call at the time and that they have the option to buy tickets through the website, rather than be placed in a queue for an undetermined length of time."

The company also defended its use of the 0844 number saying it is relatively cheap to call from landlines.

Ms White added: "We can confirm that the charge to callers on 0844 numbers is currently set at a maximum of 5 pence per minute from a BT land line, but other network rates may vary and calls from mobiles can cost significantly more.

"These tariffs are put in place by each individual’s personal network provider and we have absolutely no visibility or influence on the level of charges passed on."