Can't get academic references for Master's Degree 😭

What would you do if you're applying for a Master's degree a few years after graduation and you've emailed several previous lecturers over the last few months and they either don't respond or refuse to give you a reference? I had a suspicion that my emails were ending up in their junk folders, so asked admin to chase up a couple, and they still don't respond. Or admin is not following up properly.
It's not like I'm wanting to do a Master's for the sake of it! It's literally part of my career development as loads jobs in the industry I'm in require a Master's. I can't believe it cost almost £30k to get my degree and no one there can even write me a letter.
Honestly, this is just more somewhere for me to vent, but would also be grateful if anyone had any advice (professional references are out of the window as it's against my organisation's HR policy). Although there's less than 3 weeks to the application deadline for some universities I was thinking of applying to so looks like I won't make them

did some actually refuse to give u a reference??

Yes! Because "they know nothing about me" and it's "been too long since I graduated", even though I offered to have a chat, send my CV, etc.

oh no thats rly sad - did u not have a main academic mentor or something?