ComplaintsforYour Event Space

• Initial Complaint

  10/31/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  My family and I went to this event center on January 4th, as a potential place to hold our wedding ceremony and reception. Once we toured the place and decided on a price, my ex fiance' and I paid a deposit of $2300 to hold the venue for our up coming wedding on October 8th. We were told that the remaining fees would be due 180 days prior to our wedding. The remaining $2300 was paid in March, even though it wasn't due until May. Now that we have paid in full, the date was supposed to be ours, to do with what we pleased. We informed ****** on May 14 at 4:47pm that we were cancelling our wedding due to unforeseen circumstances. She informed us that she likes to help people out when she can, in regard to refunding people's money. However, she asked us what was going on, as to why we were canceling, which, in my opinion, is none of her business. She stated that if the venue was rebooked, she would give us 50% of our paid money back. She stated that she ran ads on Facebook for that date, but I searched the Facebook page and seen no proof of these ads. Why would she need to rebook it though? She has all of our money, so she's ahead, with no intent to refund!! Also, she never gave us the option to sell our date. After all, we were paid in full and the date was technically ours. So, we should have had the option to sell it, but unfortunately, we weren't given that option. This "Christian" woman has $4500+ dollars of ours and is not willing to do anything for us! She's taking full advantage of people and it's wrong! I've heard of several other instances where people have had awful experiences with this woman. If nothing is resolved here, we will be taking legal action and going to the news channels.

  Business response

  11/04/2022

  We entered into a contract on January 8 for a wedding and reception on October 8, 2022 with ******* for her wedding to ****.  On January 8, 2022 the contract was signed. Specifically in the contract the payments were due on January 8 and April 8 not May as she is claiming above (at the time of booking and 6 months prior to the date of the event. The first payment was made on January 8 in the amount of $2,250 and the second payment they did pay early on March 25, 2022. (Making a payment early is irrelevant and changes nothing with the terms of the contract.)

  
  According to the contract if you cancel greater than 180 days before the event, 50% of the full amount for the event is refunded and if you cancel within 180 days (6 months) of the event, 100% is non-refundable.  Why is it nonrefundable?  As you get closer to a date, it is unlikely that we are able to rebook a date as most events like theirs are planned months and most more than a year in advance.  She sent an email to us dated May 17 officially cancelling the event which is less than 5 months prior to the date.

  
  Why do we ask what the reason for cancelling is? We ask because in some situations, there may be something we can do to assist. When ******* cancelled on May 17 that put us under 5 months before the event and that is why per the contract she is due no refund.As I stated to her, we like to help people out when we can so if we were able to rebook it, we would give them back 50%. We even spent additional money in boosting an ad we had on facebook. Why would we want to get this date rebooked? Outside of the wedding and reception, there is still additional revenue from an event such as our bar and potential rental of décor and other items so without an event, we lose additional money as well. To her comment about not seeing anything on facebook, she has since changed her tune and posted a comment on our facebook page criticizing us on the ad we ran. We didn’t have to bend over backwards to try to help her but we did. The expression of “no good deed goes unpunished” has never been more true. We event spent additional money trying to rebook it.  We were hopeful since it was an October date that we would be able to rebook it but once you get within 6 months, it makes it much more difficult as 95% of the weddings we book are more than 9 months in advance .As far as reselling the date, the date and event per the contract is nontransferable but if she was so concerned about reselling the date, why didn’t she contact us with people who were interested in her date and why is she waiting until after October 8 to now seem so concerned about it.  Where has she been in trying to get this date rebooked since May 17?

  
  As far as taking legal action and going to the news channels, please do as we have a legal binding contract and as far as legal action, this individual needs to be very careful as she has already put out false information on social media and and we ourselves can sue her.  We don’t want to go down this road but if forced to, we will.

  
  The fact is that she signed a contract, we upheld our end of the contract and because she is no longer getting married, she wants her money back.  This is why we have contracts as we have a business to run and can’t stay in business and be expected to just give people money back because they have now changed their mind. Our dates are our business and when we lose a date, we lose business.  It’s our understanding that her parents paid the first payment and I understand that they are probably upset that they have lost their money but she needs to take responsibility for her actions and pay them back and not bully us into giving her something back that she has no right to.
  We don’t expect her to understand the ramifications of her decision because she doesn’t want to understand and there’s nothing we can do to change that mindset.

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩