A technical error kept students from using the Athletics Department's ticketing website to register for tickets to three Terrapin men's basketball games between Thursday afternoon and late yesterday afternoon, a department official said.
Senior Associate Athletics Director of External Operations Brian Ullmann said the website, www.ticketreturn.com/umd, stopped processing students some time on Thursday and went back up yesterday after the department notified Ticket Return, the company that runs the website. The department uses the site to dole out tickets to students online for home games for football and men's basketball.
"Due to a technical issue with Ticket Return, which manages the student website, students who tried claiming tickets were ineligible," Ullmann said. "That problem has been corrected, and anybody who wants to can still get a ticket."
The Terrapin Ticket Office sent out an e-mail about the website problems yesterday evening, noting tickets were still available for all three games affected - against Michigan (Dec. 3), against George Washington in the BB&T Classic in Washington (Dec. 7) and against Delaware State (Dec. 12). The e-mail noted tickets are still available online for all three games and apologized "for any inconvenience this has caused."
Ullmann said that because students were all affected equally and still have time to try to get tickets for these games, the department didn't expect too much negative feedback. He also said the lack of games over the weekend the website was down saved the department from possible headaches.
"We got a handful of e-mails saying, 'Hey, there's something wrong with the system. Can you contact us?'" Ullmann said.
Ticket Return has run the ticketing website for the department since Comcast Center opened in 2002, Ullmann said. He said the website has never shut students out before, and said Ticket Return has told him it won't happen again.
Though the website was down for several days, few students had issues with the outage. Sophomore government and politics major Meziane Menasria said he was not affected by the website difficulties.
"I'm planning on requesting a Michigan ticket," said Menasria, who did not go on the website over the weekend. "The only difficulty I've had is pretty much just waiting too long to get tickets."
But sophomore letters and sciences major Michael Goland, who tried to get tickets to the George Washington game over the weekend, said the website rejected him.
"I was trying to see if any tickets were available for the BB&T game," Goland said. "It logged me in and had my name up there, but I couldn't navigate anywhere else."
Goland said his roommate had the same issue while attempting to obtain tickets, but he said he didn't try finding out what had gone wrong.
"I didn't try contacting [the Athletics Department]," Goland said. "I just figured it would get corrected."
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