Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 73. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I talked about what to do if your page gets scammed on Facebook.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
01:20 Free training
02:00 The sour part of doing Facebook giveaways
02:40 Let's talk about Facebook scammers
05:55 What you can do when your Facebook page gets scammed
Whilst you’re here
Follow Boostly on the following channels to get more tips, tactics and knowledge on how you can increase your direct bookings
Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
Recently, I hosted a free training, where I was working with and showing 600 hosts how they could utilize Facebook giveaways, to grow the awareness of their hospitality business. And it went fantastically well we had hosts that were able to grow their Facebook following by hundreds, we had over 5000 pounds worth of new direct bookings. And we had nearly doubled that in inquiries. And the email list of our hosts grew as well. So it was a fantastic time.
The sour part of doing Facebook giveaways
There was a sour part of it though. And this is something that has become prevalent over the last six months. And so what I want to talk about in today's episode, and I really need for everybody to let me know if this has happened to you.
Let's talk about Facebook scammers
So today what we're going to talk about Facebook, we're going to talk about scammers, we're going to talk about potential guests losing money and what you can do to combat that. And very recently, I was hosting a free bit of training, giving hosts help and advice for Facebook and Facebook giveaways. And this is not the first time I've done this. I've been doing it for many years. But this is really one of the first times where hosts have been reporting problems. And there are some very sophisticated Facebook bots. And what they will do is they will scan Facebook and they will look now and they will target giveaways. And they will target the popular giveaways. So let's just say a popular giveaways anything that's got more than 100 likes. And what they will do is the program is designed to rip scam and duplicate the Facebook page that has got the attention. And it will use this new page that's been ripped and duplicated and observed to be a scam to reach out to the people that are entering the giveaway. And it's the same message every single time Congratulations, you've won our prize, click here or call here or do something here to redeem it. And what they're looking to do is they're asking basically for the person that they've messaged to pay one night's deposit or put some money down on a credit card to then redeem their prize. And what they're obviously doing is they are scamming that random person out of money when there's no prize to be redeemed. Now, they started with just one or two and now it is multiplied and multiplied and multiplied and they're now tagging so much more people.
When this first happened, and the first person reported it, they were very panicked, obviously because what was happening is that they were getting direct messages from the people who entered the giveaway saying listen, I've just been contacted by you, I've given him a credit card details. I'm a bit panicky now because it doesn't look like, you know, people were generally worried. And the hosts getting this as they're doing this training and doing a giveaway for first for a lot of people the first time or really panicking.
But luckily, we had been given a heads up so to speak from a host in December and said, Listen, this did happen to me, which is why we built into our T's and C's. For this giveaway to say that listen, we will never contact you and ask for payment details. In the T's and C's, we've covered the host back. But the most important thing, what we had to do now is we had to stop this happening again.
What you can do when your Facebook page gets scammed
What you need to do is if anybody reports that somebody has ripped your page scammed your page and is trying to rip them off, you need to get them to go back and you need to get them to go report it to Facebook. So instantly, you got to do a bit of damage control to say look, really, so this has happened, we need you to go and report our page to Facebook, so it will go away, so no one else will be contacted. And then what you need to do is you need to put a comment in your Facebook giveaway post to say, there are scammers out there that are contacting the innocent people have entered this giveaway, and they are trying to get your credit card details, please do not give it to him, we will never reach out to you and ask for your credit card information, even if you will. So please do not do that. So you've done the damage control. And then what you need to do is you need to go report it to Facebook as well. Now the annoying thing about this is that we have had multiple hosts who have reported this to Facebook, we've had multiple people that have reported it to Facebook as well. But yet Facebook refused to take the page down, or they are very slow in removing it. No, no reason why no excuses given. And I've seen over the course of the past few days in the BBC News and over reports around the internet that this is becoming more and more common.
So this is why I need to hear from you. If this has happened to you, because we are going to do something about it, we are going to put together a press release. And we are going to make the world know more about this. And we need to showcase it and speak from the front that it is business owners who have had enough to worry about over the last 12 months with everything that's gone on, especially in the world of hospitality, we're now having to deal with this as they are looking to reopen and get revenue back into their business to try and make up for any losses from 2020.
Our podcast sponsors
Before you leave
Please go and rate, review and subscribe on iTunes, Spotify Google Play or Anchor or visit Boostly Hospitality Podcast for the full list of episodes!
If you have enjoyed this post and want to feed my caffeine addiction you can “Buy me a coffee” ️
