Ironically the "A Lost Weekend" music festival planned for the coming weekend has become a real lost weekend for music lovers in Rutland. The event has been canceled by the organisers on safety grounds because of the wet weather and the threat of further wet weather making the site unsafe.
I can understand the organisers safely fears with a waterlogged and unproven site next to such a large expanse of water as Rutland Water. The ground in the area is saturated after the rain fall we have had and you just have to look at the reservoir and wonder if it's not the end of winter given the water levels. It seems to be full compared to what it was like three months ago when hose pipe bans were introduced.
Despite having lost out on the festival itself, and all the fun that goes with it, those people with ticket look likely to lose money on the whole event too. There are no details yet on the festivals website about refunds for ticket holders. My opinion is people might receive something back but not all of their money unless the organisers insured against bad weather.
The reasons for being only able to offer part of the ticket price back is simple and logical. The organisers will incurred expenses on setting up the festival in terms of administration, ticket printing, retainers for the bands and so forth. These are all part of the cost of the festival which they will have reasonably expected to get back from ticket sales. So simply giving back all the money will be impossible as some of the money has already been spent.
Of course there are alternatives like making the tickets valid for next years festival and offering part refunding to others. Hopefully the organisers will come up with something that means people with tickets are happy and we have something like this in Rutland next year.
Although I think it is right people should get all their money back, and I would expect this to be case, the fact is that is the first year the festival has run and the organisers have no pot of money from pervious years to draw on for full refunds. I hope I'm wrong but I fear I might be right on this one.
The organisers now face a problem. If they go bust then that is the end of the festival and best people can expect people is part of their tickets refunded. If they try and carry on then they have a massive public relations job on their hands and people will still probably get only part of their tickets refunded. It will be interesting to see how this pans out but unfortunately for the festival the easiest option is the former.
UPDATE 18th JULY - It has seems that the organisers all giving all ticket holders full refunds. Details can be found here. This is great news for the public. I hope this experience doesn't put of the organisers off and mean we won't have a festival next year. It is such a great idea and set in a beautiful part of Rutland.
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4 comments:
I read on one of the artists site people who paid via the likes of HMV tickets ir paid via Pay Pal should get all their money back. looking at the small print it looks like those who have sent money direct to the organiser might not. My view of this refund policy and not just for this festival it stinks its like robbing people legally and happens far to often thankfully for some the big ticket sellers don't put up with it. Most are questioning what adverse weather? Over 2000 tickets appear to have been sold at £75 a day a lot of money to lose.
Firstly thanks for clarifying the situation Martin.
I agree they should give all the money back and they should have insurance against the weather, it should be a condition of being able to hold such a festival. The fact is I bet they don't and they weren't required to for the whatever licence they needed.
I think the best thing the organisers can do is offer free tickets to those that purchase the tickets direct. It is the only way I can see them not going broke. At least that way the people don't lose out on their purchases.
I posted a blog link on their face book page and they deleted it. It included the organiser name address and phone number and details of past company names most with a interesting history I am told. They have post this in place of my comment link.
Not visible unless you search.
A Lost Weekend Music Festival We are currently talking to our legal and financial advisers about how best to do refunds, there will be an announcement on the web site in the next few days and we will be emailing all ticket holders.
Saturday at 20:34 · Edited ·
You would think they would put this on their website.
You would think so, so at least people know something is being done.
I also posted on their Facebook event page asking what they were planning to do. They didn't delete it but they haven't replied.
The best PR you can do at this stage is to keep people informed and they seem to be failing on that one if they haven't put that statement on there wedsite. It is no wonder people are hunting around the internet trying to find out what is going on.
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