It has not been a fun morning for the Penn State ticket office or the freshman class.
Some freshmen were sent into panic this morning as Ticketmaster crashed right at 7 a.m. when the football student season ticket sale was set to begin. When prospective buyers tried to enter their student ID number onto the website, it locked them out of the sale.
“I woke up and tried to buy the tickets but it said I was entering an invalid ID number,” said incoming freshman Aaron Weber. “I called a few of my friends and they were having the same problem. We didn’t know what to do.”
Ticketmaster remained crippled until about 7:25 a.m. when most students were able to go in and purchase tickets, although the glitch still locked out a small percentage. Many students up before 7 a.m. had either given up or were racing to a local WiFi spot to try a new connection. Patricia Rees, the customer relations manager for Penn State’s ticket office, says her co-workers felt helpless as Ticketmaster tried to sort out its glitch.
“This was a Ticketmaster error,” Rees said. “I don’t have an explanation yet about why some kids had a problem and some kids didn’t.”
Rees’ office has been receiving hundreds of calls all morning from distressed parents and students who were victims of a technological glitch. She emphasized that students may still be able to go to every game if they use diligence on the Student Ticket Exchange.
“What we’re telling kids right now is that they are not locked out of football games,” Rees said. “There is still the ticket exchange in the fall. It’s not nearly as convenient as a season package but the exchange was active with thousands of tickets last year. If you stay determined, there’s no season why you can’t see six or seven games.”
The freshman tickets sold out only 20 minutes after the glitch was fixed. The junior class tickets sold out in less than 30 minutes on Tuesday while the senior and sophomore sales sold out sometime mid-afternoon on their respective days.
Rees said nothing like this has ever happened before at Penn State. Her office contacted Ticketmaster at 7 a.m. right when the problem was reported but there was nothing it could do to help the outsourced ticket website.
“I was lucky enough to check Ticketmaster one more time before giving up completely and was able to get tickets,” Weber said. “I know a few of my friends weren’t as lucky. It’s just unfortunate.”
We have a request out to Ticketmaster to explain the situation. We’ll update this post when they respond.
