ComplaintsforLake County Stars Inc.

• Initial Complaint

  08/04/2023

  Complaint Type:

  Product Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  7/3/23 Our son was offered a spot by Coach ***** on his **** travel baseball team.7/7/23 We accepted, paid in full ($2,600), and signed a contract.7/14/23 Received a call from Coach Rock stating ****** no longer had a position on the original team offered, and he would be put on a different team. We were informed that we could either accept placement or receive a full refund. No deadline was given on the refund.Between 7/14/23 & 7/29/23 my husband, ****, had been in phone contact with staff members of Lake County Stars in regards to this situation. We were very unhappy with the change in placement after paying and accepting a position on the team my son wanted to play for. During this time my son tried out for another organization and was offered a place on their team. We accepted and attempted to move forward with the refund from Stars. We would have not looked elsewhere had the Lake County Stars organization not offered us the option of a refund had we chosen not to accept the new team placement.7/29/2023 Email sent to the Operations Director requesting refund.7/29/23 A response was received. The following quote is taken from her response."...thank you for reaching out. Unfortunately, there is not going to be any refund offered. The reason the refund was offered then was because we were moving you from one team to another, but still staying with the Stars. Now however, you are choosing to leave the program..."(This doesn't make sense because if refunded, we would be leaving the organization).Email communications continued 7/31/23 Stars acknowledged "...the refund was offered as a courtesy weeks ago...not an offer left to stand..." They never gave us a deadline. Two weeks is not an unreasonable timeframe for **** season.We have no access to the contract, which was signed 7/7/23. Any refund clause was voided when Lake County Stars offered a refund on 7/14/23. We are requesting your help in obtaining our full refund of $2,600 with Lake County Stars.

  Business response

  08/14/2023

  Hello. In response to the complaint filed by the ***** family. I have attached four documents that show either where this family signed their contract and what the contract looks like. The family claims that they are not able to see the contract yet. The contract is on our website, and also, given the fact that they signed it, the assumption would be that they were able to read it in order to sign it. Therefore, they certainly were able to see it. 
  
  
  As you can see in #** on the code of conduct that is attached, they agreed to both the fact that all payments were nonrefundable and teams could change at any point. Again they signed acknowledging that they read this and agreed to it. It is also stated in other places in the offer, attached, that all payments are nonrefundable. We are not-for-profit program who bases our budget and 12 players per team. When the ***** family decided to not stay, regardless of their reasons, they have now left us with a deficit in our budget. We did nothing to break our contract to them. We offered their son a spot to play and a guarantee that that would happen.  They, however, walked away from their contract, and their commitment to play. The only one who broke their contract, was the ***** family, not us. It is not bad business to have a family sign a contract, and then to enforce the contract. In fact, this is good business, which is out there to protect us from things exactly like this happening. Therefore, I ask that you remove this complaint from our record, as we have done nothing but enforce the contract that they signed and agreed to. Theres no reason for us to refund their money, and again they agreed to this when they signed up in writing. We are a very well run business who has made ****s of kids happy, please do not let one family who did not read the contract they signed and agreed to tarnish our reputation. 

  Customer response

  08/22/2023

   
  Complaint: 20411263
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  

  We do not dispute that we signed the contract, however the fact of the matter is that we were offered a refund if our son did not want to play on the newly assigned team AFTER that contract was signed. 

  We changed our position in reliance on this representation, and therefore withdrew our son from the team requesting the refund as promised.  *********************** was given ample notice of our withdrawal to allow time for them to fill the spot for the **** season and maintain their budget.

  We were acting on the reliance of the statement that we would get a refund, and therefore the ******************* should honor their commitment to refund our $2,600. 
  

  Sincerely,
  
  ***************************

  Customer response

  09/18/2023

   
  Complaint: 20411263
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  We are not taking advantage of anything. We relied on Coach ****'s representation that we would receive a refund if we found a different team to play for. We made decisions in reliance that we would get a refund if my son preferred to play on a different team.  As stated previously, there was no timeframe communicated to me regarding an expiration of the refund offered.
  
  Two weeks is not an unrealistic time frame to find a new team to play for considering that we had to play the remainder of the 2023 season and try out for a new team. There was communication from my side regarding the possibility of my son playing elsewhere for the **** season. I was in contact with Coach Field (our contact with Stars) throughout this process (7/14-7/29). I have phone records showing that I reached out to Coach ***** on 7/15 to express that we were not happy and going to pursue other options (**** was on for a portion of this call too). I also talked to Coach Field after our final game on 7/20 about the status of my son's tryouts. The only communication I received from ******* or **** was after I reached out on 7/29 to request Stars process the refund. If there are emails from ******* prior to 7/29 I did not receive them and would like to see them. 
  
  Also, the statement "At this point, this spot has not been filled. Everyone on this team will now have to pay more to make up for your fees if we were to give you a refund to get this team to budget." is simply not true. I have many acquaintances within the Stars organization and on the **** team my son would have played on. I know that the **** team my son had a spot on has 13 players now (which is a full team) and none of my acquaintances were asked to pay more money.
  
  It seems to us that Stars management is making up arbitrary excuses to get out of processing the refund that they offered. We only filed the public claim with BBB after the Stars management showed no signs of working with us to resolve this issue regarding the refund that they offered us. Nowhere in any of the emails from Stars management (4 from *******, 1 from ***** did they offer to work/negotiate with us. Their response was either "we don't offer refunds" (even though they did initially) or "there will be no refund issued". 

  We have been, and still are, willing to work this out and negotiate a resolution that makes both parties happy. Stars management has been the party that is unwilling to work with us.

  Sincerely,
  
  ***************************

  Business response

  09/18/2023

  We will not be offering a refund. By taking this to the BBB you have burnt a bridge with us so to speak. IF you had been patient and allowed us time to find a talented player, we might have worked something out but by jumping to an outside source, I can tell you we will not refund you at this point. I am sure you feel you have a scoop somehow on the inner workings of the Stars and our budget but you do not. This team does not have 13 players and invoices for additional fees have not yet gone out as we are still looking for a player to fit this team to try and avoid this. You may not think that 2 weeks is an unreasonable amount of time but given that we filled 24 teams in 3 weeks-- 2 weeks is huge! We offered a refund as an exception-a courtesy-but you took advantange of our kindness(as we never offer refunds) and when we did not hear from you(**** or ******* never received an email from you telling us your status so we took no news as good news so to speak). Our contract that you signed is air tight both in terms of explaining we do not give refunds and that team assignments can change at anytime. This is a fact and this is GOOD business-to make a contract and have people sign it. We do this to protect ourselves not take advantage of people. When someone walks away from us, it is a problem and hurts a whole team and program-simple as that. You chose to walk away, that came with consequences. However, now you don't like the actions your choices have left you with so you are now going after a not for profit youth baseball program. I am sorry that you do not like the response but we stand firm. We have over 300 families that are VERY happy with us and choose to stay with us as they know we will get their players ready for the next step, even if their team is changed. You chose to walk away and we choose to be done with this discussion. 

  Customer response

  09/26/2023

   
  Complaint: 20411263
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  You did in fact change the terms of our agreement when you offered us the refund.

  We would also like to stop this back and forth and let the third party mediator weigh in.

  Sincerely,
  
  ***************************

*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. ↩