Many students lost their money as soon the Alabama-Florida SEC Championship game kicked off.
Audrey Rice, a nursing student at UF, managed to get a ticket. Unfortunately, her academic schedule required her to stay in Gainesville, leaving her to look for a way out of her $60 ticket.
“I think the process of buying the tickets was fair,” she said. “I understand the reasoning behind it in the first place, but their inability to work with students who have legitimate excuses, such as a family death or sudden illness, isn’t right.”
Rice said when she called both Ticketmaster and the UF ticket office, she found out that if she didn’t claim her ticket by kickoff on Saturday, they would re-sell the ticket to someone else – profiting off her inability to attend.
According to the UF ticket office, between 150 and 200 tickets went unclaimed.
“This is where my problem lies," she said. "Better policies need to be enforced for situations like this."
UF students waited by their computers on Nov. 12 for the SEC Championship tickets to go on sale. Within minutes, all tickets were gone.
Students then took to the UF Ticket Exchange Facebook page and offered up to $300 for a ticket, only to find out Ticketmaster wouldn’t allow an exchange.
Alex Serrano, a zoology student at UF, attempted to buy tickets when they were released but was unable to before they sold out.
She found someone on the page who was willing to sell a ticket, but when they met and called Ticketmaster, she realized it was going to be a difficult process.
“Some of my friends got a ticket, and I really wanted to go, so I was willing to pay $200 for the ticket, but the service rep told us that transfers were not accepted for the event,” she said.
According to Ticketmaster, the University of Florida ticket office required the event to prevent any ticket transfers. Tickets had to be claimed in Atlanta with two forms of identification.
The university ticket office said the reason for this wasn't specific to the event, but rather they don't allow student tickets to be transferred — at all. The ticket office also said students were told in advance through an email they would be picking up the tickets in Atlanta with the two forms of ID.
“It was upsetting because 1,500 is already a small number to sell, and when you have two people who are willing to work out an agreement, it shouldn’t be up to the ticketing office if that agreement is fair or not,” Serrano said.
Serrano said her friends ended up not attending the game and losing out on the $60 because she was unable to attend.
“They were upset they lost their money, but this was our senior year and we wanted to do it together," she said. "It’s upsetting that our own university kept us from that."