Few small businesses can easily absorb that big of a loss. There are only a limited number of dates in a year available for wedding gigs. A photographer will never recoup that lost income. A bride&groom have already committed that amount of money, they’re not suffering an additional monetary loss by canceling, just the amount they’ve already allotted for. Sure, it would be kind to forgive it, but it’s not expected. Should the jeweler be made to take the engraved rings back? Should the dress shop be made to take the altered dress back? This just isn’t how wedding businesses work.
(Not to excuse this photographer’s horrendous behavior. )
The videography company stated in its defense, that when the wedding was booked, two actual videographers in the employ of the company were assigned to the gig, and thus would be unavailable to accept paid employment for that date; consequently, a refund would essentially be coming out of the pockets of those two individuals. Such a statement, if true, would imply that the company had already determined to pay those two individuals out of the money remitted by the bridal couple.
Yet the videography company goes on to crow that it had spent the money on acquiring and maintaining this website with which to badmouth and (mock the grief of) the bereaved groom.
I hope that (at least) the two videographers who have found themselves stiffed by their ACTUAL EMPLOYER go about getting themselves made whole (again, by their “employer”).
It’s how MY wedding business worked.
I had two wedding cancellations in the 20 years I did sound system/DJ work.
I refunded both because even though they were both “cold feet” situations I hadn’t lost an opportunity.
I had one office Christmas party that was cancelled 2 days before the event due to an employee dying in a car crash. I offered to refund the money but the business owner insisted that I take it.
Business is business but anytime you have the ability to show some humanity then do it
Yeah, I think most of us would at least do a partial refund if we could manage it.
You were or were not able to rebook the 2 canceled weddings? I’m not sure what you mean by “even though they were both ‘cold feet’ situations I hadn’t lost an opportunity.”
Most people are apparently in agreement here. The company had the right to keep the deposit but their actions from then on are indefensible. The considerate thing would be to offer at least a partial refund and I would argue that this would also be a smarter business move. They could also have responded to the bad review by offering their condolences but explaining why they felt that they could not give a refund. They clearly behaved badly and are getting the bad publicity they deserve.
We eat all sorts of expenses at our business for reasons of compassion, expediency, and ultimately pragmatism. Most of the time we make it work but some jobs even lose money. That’s business.
This was obviously a terrible business decision, so arguing that not refunding a deposit in an extreme situation like this is just business is stupid, and people defending it here are detached cold fuckers.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with not refunding for a cancellation at three months out - but I have to say that wedding photographers should try to mitigate their losses just like any other business. If I book a venue/hire a DJ and cancel 3 months in advance, I won’t lose my payments if they are able to rebook another event - and while weddings are commonly booked far more than 3 months ahead of time, other events are often not booked that far in advance and typically have to be scheduled around the weddings. For example, retirement parties for my coworkers are generally planned no more than 2 months in advance and are often held at wedding venues.The parties are usually on Thursday - if somehow one gets scheduled on a Friday, it’s because a previously scheduled event cancelled. Which is a long way around to saying that the venue/DJ doesn’t actually know how much they will will lose until much closer to the anticipated wedding date.
I can easily imaging that you rarely get requests for wedding photography less than 3 months out - but is that the only photography you do? Do people typically book engagement shoots more than 3 months in advance? If someone wanted to hire a photographer for a 90th birthday party at a venue would you turn it down? Those are serious questions - I don’t know if photographers specialize more than DJs and venues do.
Wedding photography is about 86% of my business. I do engagement shoots and family shoots as well, as well as the occasional corporate shoot (but those are during the week.) Engagement shoots are usually booked with the wedding for me. I very rarely have an engagement shoot that is independent of a wedding I’ve booked. But they do occasionally happen. Family shoots are fit in as my schedule allows and scheduled around weddings. At any rate, a family shoot does not make up for the retainer on the wedding. The retainer is a promise that I will be available that day and refuse any work – including more lucrative wedding jobs (and this has happened, where somebody books a standard wedding shoot with me, and somebody comes later and wants to book the full enchilada, and I have to say no, so it goes both ways.) So I don’t think there’s anything unfair about it. I promise to turn down work, even more profitable work for you with that retainer, and you pay me X amount for that. This is standard throughout all the various occupations in this industry.
What percent of weddings are called off after items are paid for? I know of 2 times that happened . One was my cousin and another time was a GF of mine with her previous BF.
Oh, I understand that other types of jobs may not be as profitable as a wedding - but if I have to cancel my venue a week after I’ve paid them the full (making up numbers) $10K (which they require 90 days before the event) and they re-book it for $8K, they aren’t going to be able to keep my $10K plus the other person’s $8K. I don’t know how much your retainer is, and I’m not sure if you’re saying that you would keep the full retainer even if you you able to book equally profitable work , but there are only two situations I have a problem with. They are 1) if the provider makes no attempt to re-book because they already have the payment from the cancellation or 2) there is a re-booking and the provider ends up better off than if there had never been a cancellation. ( They keep my $10K and the $8K from the re-booking which obviously provides more profit that my $10K event would have).
And I get the impression from the timeline and the amount of money that this company collected a significant amount of the total price and immediately refused to refund any of it rather than deferring that decision until such time as they could be sure what their losses were.
Yes, if this were a normal photographer, the order of events would have been:
wedding is booked and deposit paid
bride tragically dies
groom either asks for a refund, or writes it off. if he asks
photographer either refunds the money or says “no, non-refundable”. A decent photographer will express compassion and regret even if he doesn’t refund the money. This one apparently was so callous as to suggest using it for the next wedding!! okee dokee, so
the groom leaves a negative review at a major site, because the company acted like dicks.
the next step, if this were normal, would be
the photographer leaves a reply on the same site (I assume TheKnot allows replies, all the places I deal with that have on-line reviews do) apologizing for being unable to offer a refund, as they gave up the chance for other business, tight margins, yadda yadda, expresses sympathy and regret nonetheless. And life goes on.
So… it seems to me that the groom acted in one of the normal ways at ever step, and the photographer … is a massive asshole.
The best way to set up nonrefundable payment terms is not to tie any refund to whether any actual rebooking takes place, but to tie it to the average prior probability of rebooking.
The “actual” rebooking approach.
Let’s say your original booking is 6 months ahead. You must pay 100% upfront, and if you cancel at any time it’s down to the venue owner to try to rebook, and if he does so he refunds accordingly. But the venue owner has no financial incentive to try to rebook, does he? Logially, you are the one with the financial incentive to go out to try to find him another customer under these circumstances, but that makes little sense because you’re not in the business of renting venues.
The probability approach.
From experience the vendor knows that the average probability of re-selling the venue is (say) 90% at 6 months out, 50% at 3 months out, 10% at 1 month out. He asks for payments based on these probabilities, so at 3 months have paid him 50%, nonrefundable. You now know exactly where you stand, if you now cancel you have lost this 50% whatever happens. You are better off than if you had been obliged to fully prepay 100%. But you don’t get that 50% back if the owner resells the reservation. The owner is now incentivized to resell the reservation, and he will do so successfully about half the time.
So if the terms are set up on this type of probabilistic analysis where your deposit is less than 100%, you do not have any reasonable basis to ask him to repay contractually agreed nonrefundable payments if he is successful in reselling the booking.
After the photographer showed himself to be a complete and total asshole, here’s what the fiance should have said:
“I understand that you can’t refund my deposit because you have booked that time solely to work for me. With that in mind, I’m am letting you know that the wedding venue is now the inside of a sewage treatment plant. The wedding party may be late to arrive, but I still expect you to be there for the date and time specified in our contract.”
More seriously, do enterprises such as this videographer typically consider a reservation fee to be non-transferable? That is, if the bereaved groom had an acquaintance need the services of a wedding videographer within the next two years, would be have been able to sell his extensioned reservation to that acquaintance?