With the announcement of her upcoming tour, Taylor Swift super fans and casual listeners alike prepared for the pre-sale by signing up for the “Verified Fan” system that Ticketmaster offers to dedicated customers.

But when the day for pre-sale arrived, thousands ofpeople were left disappointed with a bitter experience and no tickets.

Fans were allowed to sign up for “Verified Fan” pre-sale codes from Nov. 1 until Nov. 9. To do this, they would enter their phone numbers and emails under their premade Ticketmaster account and select the dates for shows they would want to attend.

Over 3.5 million people signed up for presale codes.

On Nov. 14, 1.5 million users were selected for the program. The remaining users were placed on a waitlist with high hopes of receiving tickets either through the Capital One Cardholder pre-sale, Verified Fan pre-sale or the general public sale that was scheduled for Nov. 18.

However, when fans eagerly joined the waiting room half an hour before 10 A.M. in anticipation the next day, they were led into a queue with over 2,000 users in front of them. The daunting number came as no surprise considering fans knew the demand for tickets would be high.

The surprise came when customers waited more than three hours to be let into the seat selection portion of the site where they then only had ten minutes to select the seats they desired for her long-awaited tour.

Ticketmaster worked feverishly the day of to fix the site issues that caused the extended wait times and ultimately had to move the Capital One pre-sale to the following day since the “Verified Fan” presale bled into late afternoon.

As the night came to a close, many fans announced their disappointment with how the sale was handled by Ticketmaster and Swift herself.

“I waited in the queue for five hours,” Jaclyn Regina, a 20-year-old college student who’s been to two of Swift’s previous tours, said. “At that point, I was just paying to get out of the queue, not even for tickets.”

Regina secured six tickets for her and her friends, but after the long wait and minimal number of options once she got past the queue, it was hard to feel any sort of excitement for the upcoming tour.

This universal feeling has been plaguing fans ever since the presale occurred, especially given Ticketmaster’s response to the situation.

Ticketmaster claimed that the “Verified Fan” process is a way to help remove bots prior to the actual sale, allowing smooth sailing for dedicated fans when trying to secure tickets. However, for “The Eras Tour,” the company said it faced 3.5 billion total system requests due to an immense amount of bot attacks as well as unverified fans being allowed into the queue.

These factors ultimately resulted in the general public sale being canceled. Due to demand for the tour, Ticketmaster did not have enough inventory to accommodate for the sale.

Fans who weren’t lucky enough to snag a pre-sale code for “Verified Fan” or those who don’t have a Capital One card, now appear to have one remaining option: resale.

While this may seem like an easy solution, resellers are determined in making it quite the contrary. On secondary ticketing sites like Stub Hub or Vivid Seats, “The Eras Tour” tickets can go for as much as $100,000, a drastic upcharge from the original prices of $100-$900, including VIP packages.

“The Eras Tour” sale has been a wake-up call to consumers and Congress to take action against Ticketmaster for their inept handling of ticket sales; as well as the Live Nation and Ticketmaster company merger that has been deemed a monopoly by fans and politicians alike.

Although fans may be disheartened by the outcome of their buying experience, many still find the time to crack jokes on Twitter about the treachery and hardships they faced.

Consumers remain hopeful that Swift and her team will rectify the situation with a solution that benefits her actual fans and potentially eliminates scalpers and overpriced tickets being sold for her tour.

Swift has since released a statement via Instagram stories apologizing to her fans for the unfortunate circumstances that she was assured would not be an issue during the ticket sales. Ticketmaster responded with a blog post, apologizing to Swift and her fans, explaining the situation on their end.