Bruno Mars fans from Shropshire caught up in ticket chaos at Birmingham's Barclaycard Arena

People took to social media last night to say there appeared to be an issue with the scanning of tickets.

Karen Paterson, 45, from Burlton, bought the tickets for her daughter Kate's 16th birthday.

She said she was devastated that this would be her daughter's memory for her big day.

"I don't know what happened," she said. "This was a complete failure. Nobody came to speak to anyone and I had to request to speak to a manager.

"We didn't even get to the front of the queue until after the concert had started.

"My feeling is that they felt there was a scam going on, but we didn't buy tickets from touts or dodgy websites - we got them from Ticketmaster.

"The thing that has made me most angry is the total lack of engagement from the arena and Ticket Factory.

"There was a lot of young children in that line-up, and not a single member of staff thought it was appropriate to come out and talk to us."

Paul Thandi, NEC Group CEO said that "We know there were ticketing issues at last night's Bruno Mars concert and we apologise to those who were affected – we're now contacting them directly.

"We know that our customer communications were not sufficient and we take full responsibility for this and recognise that it was a mistake on our part.

"We're communicating directly with affected customers ahead of tonight's event and have put plans in place to prevent this happening again."

She said: "We missed the support act and the first hour of the performance. It was an absolute joke. There were hundreds of people and they'd been left waiting for a couple of hours. There was no explanation and nobody from the management would come and speak to us."