Melbourne Wedding Bands- CAN I HAVE MY DEPOSIT BACK?

Recently we’ve had at least one couple ask during the booking process, if they can they have their deposit back, if they choose to cancel. We have been prompted to create a system that is reasonable for our lovely clients, and also fair to our loyal musicians and band members.

Our Terms and Conditions have these relevant clauses in them:

Force Majeure:

• “In the case of any situation arising on or before the event date which renders the agreement impossible to fulfil, which is not attributed to any act or failure to take preventative action by the ‘leader’ Lexi Ross, then the ‘leader’ may cancel the performance without penalty other than the loss of the deposit and balance paid. In other words, if we had to unexpectedly cancel, we’ll pay your deposit back plus any other money paid.”

Postponements:

• “If you have to postpone your wedding or special event, we’ll move the date for you free of charge, so long as the new date is clearly stated and within a 12-month time frame from the original event date.”

Client Cancellations:

• “In the event where you want to cancel your booking, rather than postpone, we will retain the initial deposit in lieu of a cancellation fee. In this instance we will pay you back the balance or any part thereof, on the total cost of your booking. The reason we keep the deposit as a cancellation fee is that all contracted musicians in the band have set aside this date in their calendar, expecting to work. In fairness to all band members, we would need to pay them a cancellation fee. This is compensation where they could have taken another gig with a different organisation, and therefore been paid on the expected date.”

As advertised, in the event that your wedding cannot go ahead, due to COVID 19 restrictions, we will move your booking date for free. This assumes that you the client will be postponing, rather than cancelling. It means that we have reserved a date for you in good faith, and rather than cancel the booking, the whole band will show up at the new date instead. It’s up to you the client to work out a new date that all your suppliers can do. You would be liaising with your venue, Celebrant, us as your band, and any other crucial suppliers you’ve booked. Once you’ve found the new date that your whole supplier team can do, we’ll complete the originally agreed performance, with no extra fees. Unless of course you want to go bigger and add on some live music services, such as Ceremony music or Canapés hour. This is the ideal situation during these COVID impacted times.

The trouble starts when couples have originally booked in their wedding, but then decide to scrap everything and have a smaller wedding. Or have no wedding at all. That’s totally fine if that’s what you want to do. However, as Melbourne best corporate function and wedding band, we operate in a highly professional manner, and thus have our own procedures in place.

Just like shop sign that indicates they won’t be refunding ‘change of mind’ purchases, we’re unable to refund a deposit once we’ve planned to play at your wedding.

In 2020 we made things more client friendly, by reducing our initial deposit amount from 40% down to 30%. In a minute we’ll go into the method behind the madness and explain what we do with the retained deposit. First, we would like to ask any couples that are planning to book a date with our wedding band in the next couple years, to consider two things:

• Be quite sure you’re going ahead with your wedding day, before you book us.
• Have a contingency plan to postpone, rather than cancel, if restrictions crop up again.

We Are A Small Local Business- Melbourne Wedding Bands

We understand that a tiny micro wedding is a beautiful idea in a lot of instances. However, it’s quite hard to cancel on your small business wedding suppliers once we are all booked in. We’re a small local Melbourne business that has been paid for with life savings. All our marketing is done in-house, and we’ve taken on a considerable amount of risk just to keep the ‘doors open’ so to speak. We don’t want any clients to feel sorry for us, but we do want to be taken seriously. Part of this, is our wonderful clients recognising that, once we book your date, we are prevented from taking any other live music business on that date. We can only do one performance per day, so we need to ensure that the booking is going ahead. Or that we have some form of a cancellation fee in place, if its cancelled. We wouldn’t have much of a business at all if all bookings were subject to change at any moment, with no deposit in place.

BUT WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE DEPOSIT…!? The magic of the cancellation fee.

Well, we’re glad you asked, now we’re up to the part where we explain what we use that 30% deposit for…

In the unlikely event you decide to completely terminate your live wedding music or wedding music band, the deposit magically transforms into a cancelation fee. As Melbourne best wedding band, we’ve made it our business to operate with the highest standards of professionalism. Let us walk you through the behind-the-scenes aspects of your booking.

Being the best of Melbourne Wedding Bands, it’s really important for us to have professional integrity. What does that mean? For us it means, once we book musicians in on a particular date, we really don’t like to cancel on them. Its unprofessional, and we really hate to take a gig off our hard working Muso’s. Especially when a booking is on a Saturday night, or another high demand day. The last thing we want to do, is turn around and take the gig off someone who is relying on that money for their family income. Most of our musicians have families, at the very least, they are industry professionals. Just like you our lovely clients, these musicians have a schedule and are often booked out 18 months in advance to perform at special events. Once we book everyone in the band, that means their calendar is reserved on that date. They can’t go and take another gig. So, if we are to book them, and then cancel without pay, is pretty poor form. To be honest, even to cancel with a cancellation fee, is still quite bad form.

Basically, we don’t want to be cancelling on any of our band members. So, we need to ensure we have a reliable contract with our clients. Unfortunately, as you can see, cancellations have a big flow on effect. It’s not just a small financial inconvenience to band leader Lexi Ross, there is a negative effect on all accompanying band musicians.

When we retain the cancellation fee, or ‘deposit’ as it was formerly known, we are able to pay the cancelled musicians a token amount. It’s still nowhere near as good as if they had of been able to perform at your wedding, but it’s a small financial compensation.

The good thing for us is that none of our lovely wedding or corporate clients have asked for their deposit back during the COVID 19 pandemic. Most who have postponed have chosen a new date. While others that are yet to choose a new date, know that we’re holding their deposit safely, and we are 100% ready to work with them on their new date.