Residents and village hall teams in the Burnham-On-Sea area are being encouraged to be aware of a booking scam which has been spotted on Facebook.
It takes the form of a post advertising a fictional craft fayre or similar event which claims to be due to be held at a local hall.
The organiser calls out for stall holders to sign up and pay a sum of money to them – even though they do not plan to hold the event and have no booking for the hall.
A spokesperson for the Community Council for Somerset says: “The reality is that no booking has been made and the scammers are hoping people will send them a stall holders pitch fee.”
“There is also the chance that if it is your building, you could have people showing up on that day looking the craft fayre and being disappointed and possibly quite grumpy.”
“If you come across this type of advert, even if it is not for your hall, it is worth passing it on to the hall concerned so that they can take action.”
One local village hall in the Burnham-On-Sea area says it has been targeted several times.
The booking clerk says: “I have had phone calls from a couple of people asking if we have a fayre over a particular weekend as they had seen an advert on social media and that they had been asked to pay £40 for a stall. These tend to be text adverts rather than a poster produced by a legitimate organiser.”
“Often people who book a table at the markets or fayres are often hobbyists or small businesses with set budgets, so do not often have extra funds to have money taken with no prospect of selling their wares to the public. We are living through a period where every penny counts, so losing £40 to scammers is not acceptable.”
“If people spot an advert on social media and think it may be a scam, please report it to the admin of the social media page that you see them on so that they can be removed straight away.”
