My question was on the podcast yesterday (06/27 - around the 26:10 mark), but it was only answered in part. Here is a recap of the question:
My son (lives in GA, I live in IA), put a deposit down for a wedding venue in GA last year that was to occur in October of this year. In January, the wedding venue was hit by a tornado, and became unusable. They couple had put down a large deposit (I think it was 5k), but so far, have not received it back. The venue is claiming that the insurance company is giving deposits back on a batch basis, depending on wedding date, starting with the earliest ones first.
This didn’t sound right to me, and many months later, they still have received nothing - so of course I’ve turned to Clark! Clark confirmed it sounded fishy from the venue, but then gave advice on what to do if the venue’s insurance company wasn’t playing correct. He didn’t give any suggestions if it was really the venue that was just trying to not refund the deposit. (Maybe they are hoping to limit liability if they claim bankruptcy???) Any suggestions on next steps my son and his wonderful fiancée should take if it turns out the venue just isn’t returning deposits?
While I sympathize with the venue for their tremendous loss, my son worked 2 jobs to so they could have the wedding they wanted. And now he had to go back to that to start all over with another venue. Because they didn’t receive their deposit back in a timely manner - they had to completely change their wedding date to next year. Which meant they had to redo everything with the other vendors that we are still trying to put things in place. 5k is not a small amount to a semi-young couple that is also raising a family.
Not sure if I’m allowed to put the name of the venue here, so I will wait on that. At the time, the tornado caused a lot of devastation to people in Newnan, so wedding things were understandably not at the forefront. (Not only was the venue hit, but also people’s homes and such.) My son and his fiancée, were more concerned about getting help to people in the community that needed it (we have family in Newnan as well - but they were fortunately ok).
Not sure what next steps they should take if it’s not an insurance company problem or if the venue stops responding. I got a bounce back from the email listed on their website today, even though no place shows them online as closed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Kristina