Yesterday we brought you news that Apple had announced the details for their 2012 Worldwide Developers Conference. The conference is set to take place June 11-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Unfortunately (especially for those living on Pacific time), the conference sold out very quickly. All the regular tickets were gone within two hours, leaving only 100 student scholarship tickets available.
And yet, it seems that all hope is not quite lost. If you want a ticket to WWDC 2012 and are willing to pay extra for it, you can get one on eBay. At the moment, there are four tickets up for auction. At present, the cheapest is going for $1,825 – $226 above the original ticket price of $1599. The most expensive is currently nearly double the ticket price at $3,000. Don’t expect any of them to stay at those prices, though. While one auction ends in just 18 hours, the rest have several days each. Of course, none of the auctions has a “Buy It Now” options, which means that you’ll just have to bid and hope for the best.
With all four auctions you’re actually bidding for the link that the original purchaser was sent by Apple. If you win the auction, they forward you Apple’s confirmation email, and you sign in with your Developer Program ID. That, of course, means that you have to have a Developer Program ID, which means that if you weren’t eligible to get tickets yesterday, you won’t be able to use any ticket you win from eBay.
What’s more, the tickets are non-transferrable. Which means that you can’t have someone else confirm the ticket with their Developer Program ID and then give it to you. Apple will check to make sure that the person whose name is on the ticket is the person who’s at the conference.
Of course, if you’re willing to put forth a little extra effort, you could always get around that little problem. According to a posting on Craigslist, one person is willing to go so far as to legally change their name to get a ticket. There’s no word on whether this has actually worked yet, but it’s a fair bet that it hasn’t. So if you’re one of the lucky ones who has a WWDC 2012 ticket that you’ve already confirmed but, for whatever reason, now can’t use, feel free to hit up this person. As a bonus, you get out of jury duty, any DMV entanglements, court ordered community service, and even unpleasant family obligations. Of course, you also have to be comfortable with somebody having the same name as you.
What do you think? Is a WWDC 2012 ticket worth double the price? What would you do for a ticket? Let us know in the comments.