If your prayers were answered and you scored tickets this week to upcoming papal events in Philadelphia, take a deep breath and doublecheck your passes. At least one website was distributing unofficial tickets that aren’t going to get you in.
I heard from a woman who got an email from Eventbrite, the online ticketing portal that the World Meeting of Families was distributing the free tickets through, with the message that the tickets she obtained through one of its sites came from “an unauthorized 3rd party and cannot be guaranteed at the door. Your registration has been canceled.”
She told me she went online to obtain free tickets at an Eventbrite link she saw in the comments section of an online news story. Only later did she learn the site wasn’t the official site and the tickets weren’t good. The ticket was formatted similar to an official pass, but some information was missing or incorrect.
Here is the explanation I received from Eventbrite about what happened:
“Eventbrite is a self-service platform that allows anyone to create, manage, and promote their events – from large festivals to small classes and workshops. With our fraud prevention technology, and with the help of our valuable and active online community, we were made aware of what appeared to be unauthorized event pages issuing tickets to Pope Francis’ remarks at Independence Hall on September 26.
“Upon investigation, our trust and safety team identified illegitimate events claiming to be associated with the pope’s visit and the unauthorized events were immediately removed. Additionally, we proactively notified and refunded the people who purchased tickets to those unauthorized events.”
With sites such as this allowing anyone to set up an event page, it’s important to know where the official page is so you can go directly there. If you just go fishing, you could end up being hooked by a scammer.
Free tickets for all of the pope’s public events in Philadelphia now have been distributed by the World Meeting of Families. So if you see a link from that organization offering tickets, it’s not real.
Tickets are available for sale on the secondary market through websites such as eBay and Craigslist. If you’re going to purchase them there, proceed cautiously.
For more information about how to avoid scams associated with the pope’s visit, read the column I wrote about that last month here.