These Philadelphians paid for New Year’s Eve bar crawl tickets. They want their money back.

Madeleine Coutts was looking forward to barhopping with friends for New Year’s Eve.

The 23-year-old Fairmount resident and her friends were eager to participate in the “Philadelphia NYE Bar Crawl” event, which they had found through a Google search and seen in Facebook posts. The Eventbrite page, managed by a group called NYE Bar Crawls, said their tickets included free entry to at least six bars and other perks.

But when the group showed up at Misconduct Tavern to check in, the security guard told them the organizers “didn’t show up, so there is no bar crawl. There’s nothing we can do about it,’” said Coutts, a teacher. She and her friends, some of whom paid around $60 per ticket, “all lost that money.”

Coutts and her friends were surprised because they’d been in contact with a man who identified himself as Chris with a Massachusetts phone number and told them he was an event organizer, she said. He gave them a code, she said, that reduced the price to less than $35 a person after fees, according to email confirmation.

“I wasn’t worried” about the crawl’s legitimacy, Coutts said. “The organizers were supposed to be there and give you a wristband.”

After being turned away from the bar, she said, they tried to contact Chris. The calls went unanswered and then their phone numbers were blocked.

Coutts’ experience is just one recent example of consumers across the country who say they bought online tickets to a crawl that either didn’t happen or didn’t provide participants with what was advertised.

It’s also not the first time consumers and bar owners have voiced concerns about New Year’s crawls run by NYE Bar Crawls on Eventbrite.

Last year in Raleigh, N.C., bar owners told the local NBC affiliate that event organizers became unreachable on New Year’s Eve, leaving hundreds of ticket holders out about $70 each for an event that wasn’t happening. Meanwhile, bar owners in Birmingham, Ala., told the Fox station there that they had never spoken with the organizers, which they said seemed to be duplicating an existing bar crawl. This year, a crawl organizer told St. Louis’ Fox network that the event was canceled after a longtime bar owner questioned its legitimacy.

When reached by The Inquirer on Tuesday, Chris, who declined to give a last name, denied organizing the crawl but said he was “affiliated” with it. He said that he was “trying to figure out exactly what went down” in Philadelphia on New Year’s Eve.

He did not provide contact information for crawl organizers or affiliates, and emails to an address listed on the event page have gone unanswered.

The crawl was billed as “PHILADELPHIA’S #1 NYE BAR CRAWL THE LAST 8 YEARS” on its event page. The same wording was used to describe other NYE Bar Crawl events in other cities.

In Philadelphia this year, participants were promised no cover charge at Misconduct, Drinker’s Pub, Pulse Nightclub, Raven Lounge, A Bar, and “Fados,” (a misspelling of popular Irish bar Fado). Along with drink vouchers and an appetizer buffet, revelers would get food and drink specials, a champagne toast, access to a photo booth and other backdrops, “live music/karaoke,” and “VIP viewing of ball drop,” the page read.

Groups of 10 to 45 people could get free shuttle or limo service, according to the page. Coutts said her group inquired about that via email and then were told “the limo was full” but were provided a few ticket discount codes instead.

The page also featured a warning: “This is a VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE PLEASE READ: The last few years we have had fraud companies from out of state copying our event descriptions and listing false events for their own gain. Last year in the pouring rain we had people walking in to check-in and being turned away at the door for having a different ticket purchased that never existed thus ruining hundreds of people’s New Years Eve! We have worked directly with every bar owner listed below for over 10+ years directly and any other event on NYE is not affiliated with us or these venues.”

Eventbrite prompts organizers to set their own refund policies. However, they require organizers to provide refunds, regardless of their policy, if an “event is canceled or otherwise not fully performed.”

The refund policy set by NYE Bar Crawl: Contact the organizer.

Coutts says she and her friends have reached out numerous times via phone and email and have received no response.

The last her group heard from the crawl organizers was an automated email message sent through Eventbrite earlier on Dec. 31: “We have a staff member with COVID and are looking for 2 people to help with staffing? free tickets. Drinks, food provided please dm if interested.”

Eventbrite said in a statement that it will review the event and “take applicable actions … if the event is determined unauthorized or significantly not as described per our terms of service.”

At Drinker’s Pub in Rittenhouse, owner Joseph Crouse said he worked with NYE Bar Crawls for at least the last two years and had issues each year.

Crouse’s contact with NYE Bar Crawls was also a man named Chris, whom he reached at the same Massachusetts number on which Coutts’ friends had talked to him.

This year, Crouse said he declined invitations to participate in the event organized by NYE Bar Crawl.

“Last year, it was a complete mess,” Crouse said. Neither Chris, nor anyone else associated with the event showed up on New Year’s Eve at Drinker’s.

Crouse declined to work with NYE this year and said he was upset when he saw Drinker’s listed as one of the participating bars on the Eventbrite page anyway.

By 8 New Year’s Eve, Crouse said, the line for Drinker’s stretched down the block. When space allowed, security let in customers who had signed up for the bar’s own event and for three citywide bar crawls organized by upcomingevents.com, pubcrawls.com, and Barcrawlerz, groups with which Crouse said he always has good experiences.

But Crouse said there were also people showing up for bar crawls for which Drinker’s had never authorized participation.

“They were aggravated … it’s New Year’s Eve, you’re trying to go out somewhere,” Crouse said. “I feel bad for the people. That messed up their night.”

A few blocks away, similar frustration was brewing at Fado, where general manager Dani Corbett had agreed to take part in the NYE Bar Crawls event with specific parameters.

“We had an event for later in the evening, so we only agreed to participate in the afternoon,” Corbett said in a statement. “We would not agree to let anyone skip the line or skip the cover charge.”

Fado management approved a flier for the NYE Bar Crawl’s event that conveyed that information, Corbett said. But on New Year’s Eve, customers who arrived at the bar weren’t showing that flier. The Eventbrite page listed the start time as 6 p.m. and advertised “Fados” as one of the bars where ticket holders would not have to pay cover.

Over the past five years, “these crawls were always declined because of past issues,” Corbett said. “I think it’s fair to say that we won’t be participating in the future due to the miscommunications from the organizers.”

Isabella D’Urso, 25, of Northern Liberties, was among those in line at Drinker’s as the clock ticked toward midnight.

She had bought passes through Crave Tickets to a “Philly NYE Bar Crawl,” an event that Crouse said he had never seen before despite his bar, Drinker’s, being listed as the check-in location. After fees, D’Urso had paid $37 for her ticket, which she had gotten a week earlier with an “early bird” discount, according to her emailed ticket confirmation.

On New Year’s Eve, D’Urso got tired of waiting and went to Pulse Nightclub, which was listed on the event page as a place where they could redeem drink tickets with their VIP passes.

Staff at Pulse told the group they couldn’t provide them drink vouchers, so D’Urso and her friends ending up buying their own drinks.

“I’m very upset that we ended up having to spend $100 each on drinks when we had already paid for an event that we got nothing out of it,” said D’Urso, a nurse. “I basically threw $30 away. I don’t know if it was a scam, or if it was just a miscommunication and badly organized. I’m just really disappointed.”