Food festival reschedule and no refund

tonic14

Hi
I was booked to do a two day food festival (craft stall)
last august. We set on the friday evening, saturday was a washout due to a storm and the organisers cancelled at 9:30 am. Told would trade on the sunday. received email 10pm sat eve to say site was washed out and so cancelled.
Turned up sunday morning to dismantle pitch 9thankfully survived storm intact).
No refunds but a free transfer to this year's event.
I cannot make the new date yet the organiser is still refusing any refunds.
What are my rights as a sole trader?

DullGreyGuy

So this is a business contract?

As such you have no consumer rights and it comes down much more to what the contract states... what does it say?

tonic14

there is not contract - the setting up instruction/ trader info is silent on this

pramsay13

As stated this will be a business contract so you are bound by the contract terms rather than consumer rights. 
How much was the stall and is the organiser a private business or a community group?
Have you looked at your own business insurance to see if it will cover cancelled events like this?
The organisers will have had advertising and setup costs as well so will probably already be out of pocket, so may struggle to offer refunds as well as organise a new event. 

DullGreyGuy

tonic14 said:

there is not contract - the setting up instruction/ trader info is silent on this

There is a contract, it just may not be in written form which makes it much harder to argue what should and shouldn't happen. As you don't have consumer rights to fall back on it's always sensible to ensure you have a full written contract for anything above buying some ingredients from a supermarket. There is no rules over who gets to pen the contract so if the vendor doesn't have terms you can wheel out your own to use. 

It doesn't seem unreasonable that the original event was cancelled and it was a matter outside the control of the vendor and so would be a Force Majeure that would normally kick in. Normally it would mean you cannot hold the vendor liable for the event however they need to act reasonably to minimise the impact on the stall holders. It'd be up to a judge to decide if rescheduling is sufficient or if a refund less costs is required if the stall holder can't make the revised date. 

Have you spoken to the event organisers on if they were oversubscribed for stall holders and therefore there is someone else who may be willing to take your pitch?

tonic14

It's a company. Agree to some extent re weather, however storm was forecast and other events were cancelled. As small traders we had no option to turn up or lose our £100 for the pitch. I have out of pocket expenses as I had to buy extra strapping etc to tie the gazebo down. They refused any refunds (not sure they had weather insurance), however if we dont accept the new date we still lose our money and we had no say over what the date would be. seems to be an unfair contract term. The event organisers will not enter into any discussion.

Marcon

tonic14 said:

It's a company. Agree to some extent re weather, however storm was forecast and other events were cancelled. As small traders we had no option to turn up or lose our £100 for the pitch. I have out of pocket expenses as I had to buy extra strapping etc to tie the gazebo down. They refused any refunds (not sure they had weather insurance), however if we dont accept the new date we still lose our money and we had no say over what the date would be. seems to be an unfair contract term. The event organisers will not enter into any discussion.

The organisers are doubtless banking on the fact that nobody is going to go down a formal claim against them for £100, particularly when there are no clear terms of booking/what happens if an event is cancelled through no fault of the organiser. You wouldn't expect participants to be given a say over the new date if there are dozens of stallholders; there'd never be agreement.

You could try a MoneyClaimOnline https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/web/mcol/welcome but there's no guarantee of success - although a Letter Before Action might get a response.