The best part about UCF dining halls: Open all day, enough food to feed an entire continent (or, 60 thousand college students), access to endless cookies, a great place to meet up with friends, the ability to load up your to-go box with cookies, convenient locations – and did we mention the cookies?
The worst part about UCF dining halls: It ain’t cheap.
While a dining membership comes with unlimited access to any on campus dining hall, the cheapest option still runs 3,500 dollars for a Fall and Spring plan – certainly a large financial commitment.
And starting this Fall, the UCF Dining Services department is advertising that commitment more transparently, by marketing ALL of their meal plan purchases as eight month commitments.
Last year, meal plans – or “dining memberships” – were marketed as a one or two semester purchase, with Fall plans ranging between $1,700 and $1,900. However, the Terms and Conditions of purchasing a Fall dining membership stated that a dining membership purchase in the Fall required the student to also purchase that same membership in the spring. Not infrequently, students purchased a dining membership in the Fall just to give on-campus dining a try, with the intention of reevaluating that commitment in the Spring. Maybe in those formative first few months of college, that student got comfortable using the grocery shuttle to get to Publix, or discovered the unexpected satisfaction of having cereal for dinner. The student decides to embrace adulthood and save money by cooking for themselves in the spring, instead of buying another meal plan.
Fast forward to January, and now the student’s myUCF account has a $1,900 charge on it for a meal plan they never intentionally purchased. After a panicked call to Dining Services, they find out it was not some mistake, but their Fall purchase of a dining membership also included a commitment to a Spring purchase as well. The deadline to exit or modify the contract ended in August, and without extreme extenuating circumstances, there’s no way to get out of it.
Needless to say, this resulted in a number of unhappy students. Sophomore UCF student Catalina Udani found herself in this situation her freshman year, and felt cheated by the seemingly deceptive way that the dining memberships were marketed.
“I was enrolled for the unlimited meal plan last fall semester, and was shocked when I found out I’d been automatically charged with the meal plan again for the spring without warning. I attempted in vain to cancel my meal plan, citing how the meal plan’s description had failed to include its automatic renewal, but I had to settle for having it for another semester,” said Udani.
Many UCF students found themselves in this situation. Multiple reviews on the UCF Dining Services Facebook page express displeasure at being “locked in” for both semesters, “stuck with” a meal plan they didn’t want.
Thankfully, these days are over.
Now, the UCF Dining Services website offers only three student dining membership options, and all are advertised as an 8-month purchase. It appears as though the marketing team for Aramark or UCF Dining Services recognized that students’ complaints were valid, and altered their advertising process in order to better serve the UCF student body.
Additionally, the UCF Dining Services now has a “Cancellation Request” feature on their website, where students can easily submit a request for their dining membership to be cancelled. The form states that exemption is not guaranteed, but at least students now have a straightforward process to follow.
“I really appreciate that this year, meal plan advertisement has stressed the fact that the meal plans are yearly, rather than leading students to think they were purchased a semester at a time, as I was,” continued Udani.
It may be tempting to complain about Aramark and UCF Dining Services simply because, like professors who don’t curve and overly aggressive skateboarders, they’re just easy to hate. But this time, we have to acknowledge that someone in UCF Dining Services took the side of students and advocated for our fair treatment.
This shows that UCF and Aramark care about providing students with the best experience possible, not simply treating them as another profit opportunity. And that’s awesome.