Wedding reception venue dispute

Lm2210 · 26 February 2017 at 11:41AM

Hi
Looking for some advice.
We got married last year and held our reception at a local golf club.
We paid for our reception before the day itself and actually paid over the cost.
We decided to use the excess funds as a free bar.
The staff were informed that once the bill hit a certain amount to notify us.
We had our wedding there were a few issues with people having to pay for their drinks when the free bar should have been in action.
Around seven hours into the reception we asked what the bill was and we were still not at our limit by some distance so we let it go on for another hour.
We had stipulated that certain things like bottles of champagne were not to be issued under the free bar.
A few days later we received a bill from the club asking for £400 that they claim we went over on our already paid funds for the free bar.
We never had a contract of any form at all for any part of the reception and so far we have argued paying.
We agreed to pay £200 just to shut them up, my husband gave them our card details to pay the sum over the phone.
It appears rather than processing the payment immediately they wrote all our card details down and tried the card a few days later, our bank suspected fraud and stopped the transaction.
So do we have to pay and is it more than bad practice to take note of a customers card details?

Lm2210 · 26 February 2017 at 11:45AM

I must add at no point during the evening were we told we had gone over our limit. Neither of us was drunk so memory wasnt an issue! On the final bill they had listed bottles of champagne that had been allowed, when we gave them our details to carry out the transaction for £200 they wrote everything including the cvv down and proceeded to attempt to charge us for £400.

Mr.Generous · 26 February 2017 at 11:49AM

Ask for a detailed break down of the bar tab and compare it to your written or email instructions re drinks allowed. Of course they can record your card details, do you seriously think anywhere you use your card doesn't have it recorded? If you chip n pin then they have card details, if you buy as a remote purchaser they keep everything.