His harveygoldsmith.com site is being inundated with complaints from ticket-holders that the original terms and conditions of his ballot – in which the winners were given a code enabling them to purchase tickets – didn’t make it clear that they also had to pay with their own credit cards.

Nearly 600 comments have been posted on Goldsmith’s blog page, while the world-famous promoter has rounded on eBay for allowing winners to sell their codes.

People who bought passcodes have been ringing Ticketmaster and paying for their tickets with their own credit cards, although the name on those cards wouldn’t have matched that of the original ballot winner.

These are the tickets that Goldsmith intends to cancel.

“We sell tickets on behalf of the promoter and act according to his instructions,” Ticketmaster PR and communications manager Rosie Hills told Pollstar. She declined to comment on the hundreds of messages online.

“I read and re-read all of the terms and conditions fastidiously and came to the conclusion I was doing nothing illegal or in violation of the rules by buying the passcode,” said one of the many writers who claimed to be a lawyer.

“Of course I realise this circumvents the ‘spirit of the rules,’ but as a lawyer, I know that in a court of law, ‘the spirit’ does not hold up,” the Web posting continued.The main charge is that Goldsmith changed the rules after the ballot, and did so after realizing he left a huge loophole.

One writer vented his anger by saying that all who have their tickets canceled “will surely sue the living knickers off Mr. Goldsmith.” A teenager who won a passcode said he wasn’t old enough to have a credit card, so his father bought the tickets with his.

One disgruntled blogger with some artistic flair superimposed the heads of Glastonbury chief Michael Eavis and Goldsmith on a mock-up cover of a “Beavis and Butt-Head” comic, amending the title to read “Eavis and Butt-Head.”

Goldsmith’s decision to cancel the tickets is based on the premise that “it is painfully obvious that if the ticket is not transferable then the method of obtaining the ticket is not transferable either.”

Some fans point out that they must be genuine Led Zeppelin fans if they’re prepared to pay more than face value, something they wouldn’t have done if they had any inkling that the ticket would be canceled.

Goldsmith was not immediately responding to requests for further comment.