As event organizers, we know how much time, money, and preparation goes into participating in a festival. From choosing events to preparing inventory, every opportunity is an investment in your business.
Unfortunately, scammers are taking advantage of vendors looking for those opportunities. We’ve seen people attempt to impersonate our festivals, as well as other events, to collect payments or personal information from unsuspecting businesses.
These messages can look convincing. They may include a familiar festival name, a copied logo, accurate event details, or what appears to be a legitimate vendor application. We want to help our vendor community recognize the warning signs and feel comfortable checking with us before moving forward.
Here are five ways to protect your business:
1. Check the full email address, not just the sender’s name. Someone can use our festival name as their display name without having any connection to our team. Look closely at the full email address for misspellings, extra letters, or other differences from our official contact information. You can always find our official festival email address on our website. Scammers often use a generic @gmail.com account instead of an official domain email address.
2. Be careful with links and attachments. If you haven’t verified the sender, avoid clicking links, opening attachments, or entering payment information. A familiar logo or professional-looking email doesn’t guarantee that its contents are safe. Scammers may try to use our social media posts or familiar phrasing to try and impersonate the festival. You can always find direct links to our applications through our festival websites.
3. Use our official website for pricing, applications, and payments. Our festival website lists accurate booth fees and links to our official application system, where we manage all vendor applications and securely process payments. Always start from our website when applying. If an email provides different pricing or application instructions, trust the information on our website or check with us. Usually a scam email will have below market pricing to incentivize you to fall for the scam.
4. Protect your payment information. Never provide your credit card information over email or on the phone to someone calling to collect a booth payment. Be cautious of anyone claiming to represent our festival who asks for payment through Venmo, jotform, paypal, another payment app, or a personal account. All booth payments should go through our official application platform, even if someone promises a discount or offers to hold your space. When in doubt, check our official website or reach out to our official email address to confirm.
5. Do not engage with scammers. If you receive a suspicious message about one of our festivals, report it, then delete it. Use your email provider’s “Report phishing” or “Report spam” option, and avoid replying or clicking anything in the message. For accurate information about our festivals, always visit our official website.
Scams are becoming more common across all events in this industry, be careful on social media as we have even seen fake accounts there as well. Please consider sharing this article with your fellow vendors in an effort to crack down on scammers and prevent others from unnecessary issues.
Thank you for helping us look out for one another!
Pathway Vendors Official Festival Websites:
https://www.pachocolateandcoffee.com/