How to be Safer when Booking Events

We want you to be booking events without fear of being defrauded. Take a read of our guide on how you can help to protect yourselves.

Do your Research

Is this a brand new event? If it’s really local to you, have you been along as a visitor in the past? Of course, not all new events are fake, and every event has to start somewhere. But if it’s a new one, at the very least try and speak to the organizer in person.
What’s their refund policy? Not every organizer will have one – and that’s ok, especially if there is no refund policy given by the venue – but they should make it clear up front so you are aware of the risks.

Check the Venue

If the venue is listed in the advert, give them a call. Is there really an event that day, being run by the person who has posted the advert? Is the venue even real? Don’t just call the phone number on the advert – if you are able to Google it, get the phone number directly from the venue website.

Check the Organizer

Does the organizer have any kind of public profile? Check their social media – Facebook, Twitter, even LinkedIn if you use it. Are all the profile photos of the same person? Perhaps the profile pictures are animations rather than photos. Some people want privacy, so this isn’t always a sign that a person is a fraud, although it can be.
Are they being pushy when asking for money? Are they directing you towards paying them before they answer any of your questions?

Other Possible Warning Signs

Are there a lot of spelling/grammatical mistakes on the advert?

Is there some key information missing from the advert or web page? If the state or date is missing, are they using this advert to scam people in different areas and multiple times?

How are they asking you to pay? NEVER EVER pay via PayPal friends and family unless you are 100% sure everything is legitimate. Also there are new cash apps which also offer little or no protection should something go wrong. Even if that means you have to pay an extra few dollars, it’s worth it for the added protection.

What Bookastall Does

You might well have seen the event advert in one of our Facebook groups. When we accept people into the group, we check out the information that we have on them.
We do not allow anyone into the group who:
1. Has a profile which is not at least two years old
2. Has a profile with only a handful of friends
3. Is a business page with very few likes
4. Is a business page with lots of people managing it

However, remember that some people get hacked so they might be in the group already when their page gets hacked. Also, some people have very private profiles – which they are entitled to have – so often there’s limited information available.

Bookastall runs Facebook groups for every county – if someone is blocked from one group, it gets flagged when they try to join another one of our groups. We can also mass-block them if it is brought to our attention that someone has been behaving unethically.