Help! Wedding Caterer trying to refusing refund. What are my options??

DavidJ33

Hi, any advice is much appreciated!

My wedding reception was due to take place on the 21st March 2020 (5 days after the government advised to avoid mass gatherings and work from home and 2 days before full lockdown). We had scheduled and paid for 250 guests on the night. It was decided on the 17th of March to postpone the event until the 8th November due to the uncertainty at the time, we hoped that would be enough time for Covid to pass through. Unfortunately the government guidelines still only allowing 30 guests for receptions will not work for our event as too many family members would be left out. We also do not want to leave everyone in limbo not knowing if the event will/will not go ahead so we this week contacted both the venue and caterers to see where we standing in cancelling the event. The venue come back and can offer a refund. The caterers have since emailed stating that as it was our decision to postpone the March date (whilst lockdown wasn’t technically mandatory at that point) if we now cancel the 8th of November there would be zero refund. Their decision is based on their contract T&Cs apparently but this still seems unreasonable to me, I would expect them to keep a % for their time and admin but to keep 100% when no service has been provided and in such exceptional circumstances doesn’t seem fair. In terms of our options.. Do I keep pushing down the cancelling route and complain and see where I can get to... Or, if they don’t HAVE to provide refund based on their contract instead of cancelling could I say that I’m going to go with 30 guests as that’s all that is allowed, would this mean they then have to refund the difference? Or do I just let the time run down and assume that when we get to November a 250 person event still can’t go ahead and they are forced to refund then? The only thing the company has offered so far is another postponement, we do not want to do this again having already waited the first time around and then an additional 8 months after the first postponement. Even if we were to postpone again there is still no guarantee we could have an event as we would want in another 6 months for example. What should I do??

Thrugelmir

How much food/drink etc have they have specifically procured for your big event? 

DavidJ33

Thrugelmir said:

How much food/drink etc have they have specifically procured for your big event? 

They are quite a large caterer and were catering several weddings every weekend and on most weekdays pre Covid. I imagine they will say when they postponed the original March date they had provisioned food for it though. Due to the unfortunate Covid announcement timings we had to move it 5 days before..

macman

Wedding insurance?

DavidJ33

macman said:

Wedding insurance?

No, unfortunately not... by the time we had that thought it was difficult to find with Covid ramping up so quickly 

mattyprice4004

They'll just argue they'd bought the food for your wedding - and to be fair, 5 days is practically no notice and they'd have been within their rights to declare they'd bought it all, the money is spent and that's that, no postponement or refund.

I think you need to work with them in terms of securing another date, as they've been far more generous that I'd expect.
They probably lost money on food bought for your event, staff that had been promised shifts etc - so there's no way they'll be offering you a full refund.

If a new date is out of the question, perhaps negotiate a small refund? Better than nothing!