Is this any way to treat a loyal fan and long-term season ticket holder? My 19 year old daughter has just had her student season ticket suspended and told it will be revoked if the club doesn’t receive a letter from her Uni in 7 days. Course doesn’t start until next week! Uni pass was shown as evidence at the time of renewing in May. Since then no request from the club for anything until letter turned up yesterday. She called ticket office they said if no further evidence provided in the next week her ticket will be revoked and she'd have to pay full adult price. Anyone else had this?
Isn't it part of the terms and conditions of have a student season ticket? It's probably automatic as we're now 6 weeks into the new season. Does your daughter not have a letter or E-Mail telling her that she's enrolled at whichever University she's at? I'm pretty sure there's a fan liaison officer who you might be able to contact and explain the situation - the guys on the ticket office phones probably don't have any authority to do anything about it.
She's a second year student so no letter from the Uni. When renewing the club were happy with the evidence provided. Since then there has been no request from the club, nothing in the in the terms and conditions and nothing in the pack with the new season ticket. The first contact is a letter to say season ticket is suspended 6 games in. I have no problem with having to provide evidence, the club are just being unreasonable, she moves house this weekend and doesn't start Uni until next week, now has to get a letter from the uni to the club sorted before the next game or her season ticket is cancelled
I don't see the fuss. It's a loophole that some would exploit and the club tell you when you get a student concession what you'll need to do to prove it.
I agree sounds a harsh way to deal with it but I'm sure a call to the club to explain the circumstances and a quick mail to the admissions officer at the uni for them to provide a letter will sort it quite quickly
It says (at 4.3): "A Full-Time Student Season Ticket if they are in Full-Time education (proof only accepted from your place of learning, must be seen before 1st August)." A student card isn't proof 'from her place of learning'. I once had to do something for work which saw me enrolled at the local uni for two years. I had a student card as a result, but I wasn't a full time student.
I know that my uni has an automatic service to download a document with proof of matriculation: is that an option?
Term might not have started, but administrators will probably already be at University. Give them a call and they'll be able to sort it out. They'll be used to requests like this; equivalent evidence is often needed for student Oyster etc. I think there should be something between: 'bring us some ID at some point' and 'your card is suspended' (assuming there wasn't). The club should copy Apple and ask for verification through an active University email address. Would probably save a whole load of faff and admin costs. *Edit*- although I guess a few part time students might slip the net, but the numbers would probably be negligible.
The evidence supplied at the time of renewing was deemed satisfactory at the time and was accepted by the club when taking our money. Since then no communication. No problem in supplying the information but she doesn't need the hassle in the first week!
I can only assume people have been abusing the student thing hence the clubs stance. Can you call the Uni, get a letter from them and send it over, (all probably by email)? When I changed my eldest daughters season ticket into my sons name I had to provide a copy of his birth certificate to prove he was the age I was saying he was. The club are absolutely right to do this. In your case, (according to UEA above), this should have been done by August 1st so they've been pretty lenient so far IMO. I think the email could have been worded a bit softer but a phone call and an email and it's done and dusted.
No problem with having to provide evidence as the system could be abused. Evidence (satisfactory at the time) was provided in person when renewing in May (which is before 1st August). The club now says that is insufficient and the first communication from the club is to suspend a season ticket. The club has asked for a letter from the uni to the club be emailed in the next 7 days. The course doesn't start until next week so now she is under pressure ask the uni, have them do it and the club accept it by next Thursday.
It's just a phone call H77. Don't let her stress about it, she's got enough on assembling enough cr*p to take with her, (trust me I know). Just make the call yourself, (the Uni will be fully staffed now), the club will take 10 seconds to see it and OK it.
Has anyone got that Dave Messenger’s club email address? Remember a few people having posted it on here in the past in regards to sorting out ticketing issues and stating that he’s a decent guy who does his upmost to help.
I got sent this e-mail a while ago from the university. Generally speaking you should be able to e-mail someone who can send you a suitable letter. If they're a second year, they should have something they got as a first-year for confirming attendance. It's a little frustrating, but given the difference in costs, I can see why they've done it.
Cheers guys! Thanks for the email address I've already contacted the club (no reply yet). Just think its a heavy handed approach and was interested to hear if anyone else had seen the same. No stress
This appears to be a complete shambles. My son has received a similar letter despite the fact that we covered this with the ticket office over the summer and his University department sent three separate emails to the ticket office confirming his attendance - one from his tutor and two from the department office. Are they actually bothering to check before sending these letters out?
We had two letters one for each of my sons. One has just started his Uni course so I've sent the club the info they asked for as evidence. The other graduated this summer. He had intended to stay on and do a Masters but changed his mind so I've paid the difference to upgrade to an adult - £255.00. My biggest issue with the club's approach is that the letters were addressed to my sons and sent out a time when anyone in full time education would be living away from home so would be unlikely to receive the correspondence in time to respond. (I only opened my lads' letters as a mate of mine's daughter had received similar, so I was expecting them to arrive). I do feel it is little harsh to suspend the tickets with immediate effect. Surely a month's warning could have been given.
I had to do the same when I was at uni a couple of years back. There is most likely a student e-service/registry for your daughter's uni that she can log into which will show that she is registered for the upcoming uni year- just screenshot that and send it to the club.
Please note, the ticket office want the uni/course provider to email the club directly. A copy of a student card or letter from the ST holder’s own email account won’t suffice. The club will still contact the uni to get confirmation directly. If you are in this situation you should approach your uni, give them a data protection/GDPR disclaimer to enable them to contact the club, with the ticket offices email address so they know where to send it to.
It’s fair enough and appropriate that the club are policing this and like others have said I’m sure it can easily be resolved. That said it does seem quite harsh. The tone of the letter is really blunt and unfriendly. They could easily insert a “please” into the final sentence. It’s not really how a business should communicate to its customers.
We had the pleasure of receiving two of these high handed letters in our household. Surely the club has someone responsible for vetting "customer" communications before they are sent? One easy way to solve this problem (if it is a problem) is to do away with the specific student pricing and offer it to everyone under the age of, say, 24 years, making it a young adult rate. We probably have hundreds of non-students on low or minimum wages who could really benefit from such a change. Everything is then based on d.o.b. and easier to administer. Given that ticket sales apparently form a smaller portion of our income these days, I am sure that such a move would not bankrupt the club. The only problem might be mature students - but there is never going to be a perfect system......
The club once offered a student ST but it was age capped. It’s now “of any age” to comply with the Equality Act.
I think you've done the right thing by posting in a football forum rather than contacting the club directly.
What a great idea, why didn't I think of that...thanks for the suggestion! Not that I need to explain myself but , my daughter phoned the club immediately and they were unsympathetic and just reiterated the contents of the letter. I've since handled this via email with the club and they've reinstated the season ticket and given more time. I thought maybe a fans forum would be a place to share this and see if other fans had similar experiences, silly me!
I received this joyous letter as well, got a letter addressed to the football club printed off by my uni’s office, had it stamped, scanned in and sent. Received a reply saying an email had to be sent from the uni directly and if they could forward an email from the uni, therefore I forwarded the online confirmation I had received following registration for the third year, however this was also not deemed appropriate as it said “forthcoming year” rather than 2018/19. My only emails from the university referring to the 2018/19 academic year were addressed generically as they were sent to a course mailing list so they weren’t deemed appropriate either. The University eventually sent my scanned letter from their account to which the club replied to them saying they had put it with my account which I was copied into, however I personally still haven’t received any communication about this from the club so who knows if my season ticket actually is still suspended. The whole things just heavy handed, surely a combination of the three different documents that I sent were evidence that yes, this person does attend university otherwise he wouldn’t have this amount of documents even though none of them exactly match what we wanted.
Disappointed to have read this whole thread and not seen a single reference to fan. Misleading thread title to say the least.
